The orbit of the asteroid 2953 Vysheslavia is currently locked in a tiny ch
aotic zone very close to the 5:2 mean motion jovian resonance. Its dynamica
l lifetime is estimated to be of the order of only about 10 Myr. Since Vysh
eslavia is a member of the Koronis family, such a short dynamical lifetime
opens a variety of interesting questions concerning its origin and evolutio
n. A. Milani and P. Farinella (1995, Icarus 115, 209-212) considered a numb
er of plausible scenarios and suggested that most probably Vysheslavia is a
n outcome of a recent secondary fragmentation event in the family. Here we
propose that Vysheslavia might have been placed on its peculiar orbit by a
slow inward drift of the semimajor axis due to the Yarkovsky effect. Numeri
cal simulations confirm that such evolutionary processes can take 100-500 M
yr, a period comparable to but still shorter than the probable age of the f
amily ton the order of a Gyr), depending on the thermal properties of Vyshe
slavia's surface, the orientation of its spin axis, and its size. we have a
lso integrated orbits of the asteroids 7340 (1991 UA(2)) and 1993 FR58, loc
ated very close to but outside the chaotic zone that triggers Vysheslavia's
orbit instability, and we show that the orbits of these asteroids may also
slowly evolve toward the chaotic zone. Such an erosion of the asteroid fam
ilies, caused by a slow leakage to the nearby powerful resonances, could be
fairly common in the main asteroid belt. (C) 2001 Academic Press.