AMHERST, Mass. - University of Massachusetts climate researcher Julie Brigham-Grette, department of geosciences, has just returned from a month-long, international expedition to a remote lake in Eastern Siberia – the site of an ancient meteorite crater. The crew camped in the middle of frozen Elgygytgyn Lake, drilled through seven feet of ice, then dropped specialized coring equipment attached to steel cables through 175 feet of water to collect several 10-foot-long cylinders, called "cores," of layered sediment from the lake bottom. Scientists hope that the sediments will give them clues about the region’s past climate since the area was hit by a meteorite 3.6 million years ago, Brigham-Grette said. This is a pilot project to determine whether it would be worth a much larger effort to collect sediments down to the original crater floor.