Short answers, pulled from the story.
North Asia covers 13,100,000 square kilometres, which equals 8.8% of Earth's total land area. It is the largest subregion of Asia, occupying approximately 29.4% of Asia's land area.
North Asia consists of the Ural, Siberian, and Far Eastern federal districts of Russia. Together they covered a population of 37,630,081 in 2010.
The Siberian Traps, a large igneous province in the central part of North Asia, was formed by a massive eruption approximately 250 million years ago. The formation of the Siberian Traps coincided with the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the largest mass extinction in Earth's history.
The Buryats are the largest indigenous group at 445,175 people, followed closely by the Yakuts at 443,852. Indigenous peoples make up only about 5% of North Asia's total population.
Russia conquered the Khanate of Sibir, one of the last independent Turkic states in the region, in the 16th century. The full annexation of North Asia was completed when the Convention of Peking was signed in 1860.
Soviet General Georgy Zhukov commanded decisive Soviet forces at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, defeating Japanese forces in a conflict that arose from Soviet-Japanese border tensions throughout the 1930s. The victory led to the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in 1941.