It was located in the southwestern area of the archipelago, in the eastern part of the Laptev Sea.

He discovered it by following the tracks of an enormous herd of reindeer across frozen sea ice.

Czarina Catherine II rewarded him for discovering this and another island in the New Siberian Island archipelago with the exclusive rights to collect fossil ivory from them.

[3] After its discovery, Semenovsky Island rapidly decreased in size until it disappeared between 1952 and the early 1960s.

By 1952, it had been eroded down into a sand bar lying just above the sea surface.