The Shandrin mammoth was discovered in 1974 near the river at the feet of a steep slope in the eastern side of the Kondakov Plateau by geologist B. S. Rusanov of the Yakutsk Institute of Geology.

Its entrails were well-preserved and their contents made it possible to determine the composition of the paleoflora of the area at the time the animal had lived.

The contents of the entrails included species of grasses, sedges, wormwood, larch, spruce, dwarf pine, birch, alder and willow.

[3][4] The Shandrin river begins north of the Arctic Circle, in the Orgolyor (Орголёр) lake of the northern slopes of the Ulakhan-Sis.

It heads roughly eastwards across a treeless hilly area by the Kondakov Plateau until the mouth of its Antykchan tributary, after which it bends northeastwards and flows across a partly swampy floodplain.