These colossal spires rise from the Siberian wilderness like skyscrapers. They're filled with dead animals

On the banks of the Lena River in eastern Siberia, Russia, thousands of towering rock spires rise into the sky like a great city. 

Reaching heights of up to 200m, these huge cliffs are the fossilised remains of an enormous, ancient reef belt, much like today's Great Barrier Reef in Australia. When the fossil-filled seabed became exposed to the air, ice penetrated the plateau, and as it expanded and contracted over millennia, it shattered the rock, forming deep gullies and pinnacles.

Remnants of marine life can be seen within the spires, which today stand intermittently along 250km of the river.

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Such is the significance of the pillars, that in 2012 the region was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site: Lena Pillars Nature Park. The park covers an area of 13,870km2 – more than five times the size of Luxembourg.

The rock formations are extraordinary, but among them, and in the water and land around them, lives a host of equally remarkable plants and wild animals. 

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Lena Pillars wildlife

Taiga forests of larch and pine grow in the higher areas of the park, with an understory of cowberry, blueberry, bearberry and Labrador tea, while meadows, wetlands and sand dunes are found along the Lena River and smaller watercourses cutting through the plateau. 

Algae, fungi, lichens, mosses and liverworts exist in great numbers, alongside 464 species of vascular plants, 21 of which are nationally rare and endangered. 

Despite temperatures dropping to -40°C – and occasionally -60°C – in the winter months, mammals thrive here. Mammalian predators including brown bears, wolves, wolverines, sables (a species of marten), east Siberian lynx and east Siberian ermines (stoats) have all been recorded, alongside herbivores such as moose, reindeer, Siberian red deer, Siberian musk deer, roe deer and Siberian hares. 

Smaller mammals living in the park include northern pikas, musk rats, red squirrels, Siberian chipmunks and wood lemmings.

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Lena Pillars Nature Park is home to over 100 nesting birds. This list includes grey herons, tundra swans, ospreys, white-tailed eagles, golden eagles, peregrines, gyrfalcons, Siberian white crane, great grey owls and woodcocks. 

There are 21 species of lake and river fish, 645 species of invertebrate, and four species of amphibians and reptiles: Siberian salamanders, Siberian wood frogs, northern vipers and viviparous lizard. 

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Top image: Lena Pillars. Credit: vi_blackberry/Getty Images

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