Similar stories — other lost populations, other chapters of the human narrative hidden in ancient specimens — may be preserved in permafrost sites across the Arctic that have not yet been investigated.

Whether they will be investigated before the permafrost that preserves them thaws depends on choices being made now, in laboratories and universities and government agencies and international scientific organizations, about where to invest the resources needed to find, sample, and analyze these materials before they are gone.

The children at Yana were lucky, in a sense.

Their teeth happened to be in a site that was discovered, excavated carefully, and curated in a way that made them available for genetic analysis when the technology existed to perform it.

The frozen ground did its job for 31,000 years.