6,200 km Belkovsky Island (о. Бельковский) 500 km To the south and nearer to the Siberian mainland lie the Lyakhovskiye Islands (6,095 km): Great Lyakhovsky Island (о. Большо́й Ля́ховский) 4,600 km Little Lyakhovsky Island (о. Ма́лый Ля́ховский) 1,325 km Stolbovoy Island (о. Столбово́й) 170 km Semyonovsky Island (о. Семёновский) 0 km (now submerged) The small De Long Islands (228 km) lie to the north-east of Novaya Sibir. Jeannette Island (о. Жанне́тты) Henrietta Island (о. Генрие́тты) Bennett Island (о. Бе́ннетта) Vilkitsky Island (о. Вильки́цкого) Zhokhov Island (о. Жо́хова) The New Siberian Islands are low-lying. Their highest point is located on Bennett island, with an elevation of 426 m. They are part of the East Siberian Lowland, forming a geographical continuum with the continental plains further south. The New Siberian Islands once formed major hills within the Great Arctic Plain that covered the northern part of Late Pleistocene "Beringia" between Siberia and Alaska during the Last Glacial Maximum (Late Weichselian Epoch). These islands represent the remains of about 1.6 million square kilometers of the formerly subaerial Great Arctic Plain that now lies submerged below parts of the Arctic Ocean, East Siberian Sea, and Laptev Sea. At this plain's greatest extent, sea level was 100–120 m below modern sea-level and the coastline lay 700 to 1000 kilometers north of its current position. This plain did not undergo extensive glaciation during the Late Pleistocene or the Last Glacial Maximum because it lay in the rain shadow of the Northern European ice sheet. During the frigid polar climate of the Last Glacial Maximum, 17,000 to 24,000 BC, small passive ice caps formed on the adjacent De Long Islands. Fragments of these ice caps remain on Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett Islands. Traces of former small slope and cirque glaciers in the form of buried ground ice deposits are preserved on Zhokhov Island. The sea submerged the Great Arctic Plain (except for the New Siberian and other isolated islands) within a relatively short time span of 7,000 years during the Early–Middle Holocene. Geology As noted by Digby and numerous later publications, this archipelago consists of a mixture of folded and faulted sedimentary and igneous rocks ranging in age from Precambrian to Pliocene. The Lyakhovsky Islands consist of a folded and faulted assemblage of Precambrian metamorphic rocks; upper Paleozoic to Triassic sandstones and shales; Jurassic to lower Cretaceous turbidites; Cretaceous granites; and ophiolites. The Anzhu Islands consist of