The majority of the skeletal materials are remains of the butchering during the years 1742-1768. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld reported 1879 that the bones were excavated on a flat terrace near shore 2 to 4 meters above sea level. They were buried under a 50 cm thick layer of sand and peat, and were searched for by poking about with iron rods.

Let us trace the ways of these remains into the museums. In the 19th century the aristocratic cabinets of curiosities (also called wonder-rooms) evolved into the natural history museums as we know them now, and became important bourgeois educational institutions. Now animals, plants and minerals were systematically collected and described. At the same time the major museums competed for the possession of the most spectacular and rare items. Many museums desired a specimen of Steller’s sea cow, and some were prepared to pay large sums.

On the 25th April 1899 appeared in the "Priamurskie Wedomostim", the weekly paper for the Amur region, an article by Nikolai Sergeyevich Vaksmut, which listed in detail the history of the skeletons found on Bering Island between 1875 and 1899. Vaksmut was from 1890 to 1893 assistant to Nikolai Alexandrovich Grebnitzki, Governor of the Commander Islands. I believe that this article did never appear outside Russia, here is a brief translated abstract. The article was presumably written from memory, and there are a number of uncertainties^*)marked with asterix and note, still it gives a fair idea of the situation:
 

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