11 species of mammoths have been described, but when talking about these animals, they usually mean the woolly or tundra mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius. He had the largest range, his remains were found more often than others, and he was the first to be described. It is believed that the environment in which woolly mammoths lived was the tundra-steppe - a relatively dry area overgrown mainly with grasses. It appeared near glaciers, which, having bound huge masses of water, dried up the lands adjacent to them. As evidenced by paleontological finds, this region was not inferior to the African savannas in terms of the abundance of various animals. In addition to mammoths, rhinos, bulls, bison, saigas, bears, lions, hyenas, and horses lived in the tundra-steppe. This complex of species is called the periglacial, or mammoth, fauna. But now these places are extremely poor in large animals. Most of them died out.
In the early 1990s, Russian researchers made a sensational discovery: Radiocarbon dating of the teeth of woolly mammoths found on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean showed that ancient elephants existed on the island only 3,700 years ago. The last mammoths were dwarfs, one and a half times smaller than their continental predecessors. But 12,000 years ago, when Wrangel Island was connected to the mainland, large mammoths lived there.
LOST IN SIBERIA
Discussions about the extinction of mammoths are at least 200 years old. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck wrote on this subject. He believed that biological species do not die out, and if the animals of the past differ from those living now, then they did not die out, but turned into others. True, now there are no animals that could be considered descendants of mammoths. But Lamarck found an explanation for this fact: the mammoths were exterminated by man, or they did not die out, but were hiding somewhere in Siberia.
Both explanations were quite acceptable for their time. On the one hand, the destructive effect of man on nature was obvious even then. Lamarck was one of the first to thoroughly analyze this process. On the other hand, in Europe, ideas about Siberia were very vague. And it was in the time of Lamarck that data began to come in about the finds of the corpses of mammoths, well preserved in the permafrost, as if they had died not so long ago.
Lamarck's antagonist Georges Cuvier interpreted the same information differently: since the corpses were well preserved, they were not victims of predators, but died for other reasons, possibly due to flooding. The essence of his theory boiled down to the following: in the history of the Earth there were fleeting cataclysms that could lead to a change in the fauna in a certain area.
Around the same time, the Italian paleontologist Giovanni Battista Brocchi expressed another idea: every species on Earth has its own term. Species and groups of species die out just as organisms die of old age.
All these points of view had supporters and opponents. At the beginning of the 20th century, one of the followers of Lamarck, the German paleontologist Gustav Steinman, tried to prove that only the largest mammals completely died out - those that were hunted most intensively. The rest of the animals known from fossils did not die out, but turned into others. Such ideas have not found wide acceptance. Cuvier's theory of "catastrophism" turned out to be more in demand, especially since it was supported by new data on the transformations that the Earth's surface has undergone throughout its long history.
Some researchers have developed ideas about disharmony, "over-evolution" or "inadaptation" of extinct creatures. The absurdity of individual animals was so exaggerated that the question arose: how could they even exist? Mammoths have been used as one example of such disharmony. As if the huge tusks of these proboscideans, having developed excessively, led them to an evolutionary dead end. But the authors of such works bypassed one important point: "absurd" animals flourished for millions of years before disappearing.
Nevertheless, their reasoning was based on a real fact: in the evolution of certain groups of organisms, directions are found that lead to the highest possible degree of development of a trait. For example, the size of the body, horns, tusks, teeth, shells may increase over time. In this case, the reverse process does not occur, and when a further increase becomes impossible for physical reasons, the group dies out. The Austrian paleontologist Otenio Abel called this the law of inertia.
ON A DIET
One of the most popular hypotheses explaining the extinction of the mammoth fauna is climatic. At the end of the last ice age, about 15,000-10,000 years ago, when the glacier melted, the northern part of the tundra-steppe turned into a swamp, and forests, mostly coniferous, grew in the southern part. Instead of herbs, spruce branches, mosses and lichens became the food of animals, which allegedly killed mammoths and other representatives of the mammoth fauna.
Meanwhile, the climate has repeatedly changed before, glaciers advanced and retreated, but mammoths and mammoth fauna survived and flourished. Suppose the tundra and taiga are indeed not the best place for large herbivores (however, reindeer, elk, Canadian forest bison still live there). But the theory of evolution teaches that when the climate changes, living beings must adapt to it or move. The territory at the disposal of mammoths was huge, almost half of Eurasia and most of northwest of North America (in which, in addition to the woolly mammoth, the Columbian mammoth, Mammuthus columbi, lived at the same time).
If the climate changed, then the number of animals could decrease, but they would hardly disappear completely. Most of the territory inhabited by mammoths is now occupied by coniferous forests and swamps, but there are other biotopes on it - meadows, floodplains, large areas of mixed forest, devoid of forest foothills. Surely among these spaces there would be somewhere a place for mammoths. This species was very plastic and 70,000-50,000 years ago lived in the forest-steppe and forest-tundra, in swampy or, conversely, dry woodlands, in the taiga, mixed forests and tundra. Depending on the latitude, the climate in these areas varied from mild to severe.
But the main argument against the climate hypothesis is that the extinction of the mammoth fauna in many places occurred when there were no significant climatic and landscape changes. If so, then the expansion of the taiga flora could not be the cause, but the result of the extinction of animals. If there are many herbivores, then they eat not only grass, which can grow quickly, but also sprouts of trees and shrubs. As a result, trees do not regenerate well and are reduced in number. In addition, proboscis can bring down big trees. In African reserves, gamekeepers are forced to regulate the number of elephant herds, otherwise they simply eat up the savannah. Therefore, it could happen that when mammoths died out, and other herbivores became much smaller, a forest grew on the site of the tundra-steppe.
Meanwhile, it is obvious that the extinction of mammoths and other large mammals coincides in time with the beginning of man's offensive against nature. Already tens of thousands of years ago, people had tools with which they could destroy
their neighbors on the planet. The ability to make flint spearheads, mastery of fire, the ability to hunt together and other qualities made ancient people rivals of predators.
DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS
Ancient people hunted mammoths especially often. Entire settlements were built from their skulls and skins. Maybe they killed everyone in the end? Such an explanation is offered by some modern researchers (although, as we said, this hypothesis is already 200 years old). Other scientists believe that "a handful of savages with sticks" were unable to exterminate an entire species of large animals.
How many people were on Earth at that time is not exactly known, but thousands of primitive sites have already been found in deposits 12,000 years old. Perhaps in the time of the mammoths, "savages" were enough to cause serious damage to nature. In the 19th century, for example, European travelers described the barbaric driven hunts of the Indians, Eskimos and African tribes, who exterminated a huge number of animals. Moreover, the natives did not care that most of them would not be used. Huge accumulations of herbivore bones in different parts of the world indicate that ancient people did not differ from their descendants in this respect. As the fauna became scarce, the tribes migrated in search of places rich in game.
However, sometimes modern researchers paint a more complex picture of extermination. The man allegedly “rocked the ecological pyramids”, that is, somehow violated the established ecological order. Ancient hunters, together with predatory animals, allegedly first destroyed large herbivores, and then the predators themselves died out from malnutrition.
By the way, on Wrangel Island, archaeologists found traces of a settlement of paleo-Eskimos, but they were mainly engaged in marine fishing. There were no remains of mammoth bones at this site. Only the bone of a woolly rhinoceros (which died out much earlier) was found, which was probably something like a child's toy. That is, no one bothered the last mammoths on the island, they died out on their own. The dwarf size of mammoths from Wrangel Island, as well as the stamp of disease on their remains, indicate that these animals suffered from a lack of food and inbreeding. And this small population of dwarfs gradually died out. Perhaps it was isolation that allowed her to outlive the rest of her relatives by several thousand years.
So, claims that climate or man were the main reason for the extinction of mammoths are far from certain. With discrepancies in hypotheses, scientists often offer compromise solutions. The “traditional” conclusion of works on the extinction of animals has already taken shape: supposedly in this process, various adverse effects overlapped each other. In our case, mammoths were damaged by the climate, and people pursued them, and with a decrease in numbers, genetics failed: closely related crossings began, which led to degeneration. Okay, let's say the mammoths weren't so lucky, but it's not clear why other, non-extinct ones were lucky. Bison, musk oxen, reindeer...
VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF HAYDN
One consideration in modern science is not discussed at all, namely, that mammoths died out "of old age." Such interpretations of evolution are now considered heresy. However, this explanation seems to put everything in its place: during the evolutionary “youth”, mammoths did not care about the climate, and primitive hunters were not afraid of them. And then, when the “youth” passed, their numbers began to decline steadily. In the end, the last long-lived populations, like the one that lived on Wrangel Island, also died out.
Evidence for such phylogenetic aging is plentiful and growing. Recently, American researchers have tracked the extinction of some mammals using spore-pollen analysis and many others. modern methods. They came to the conclusion that on the North American continent, the disappearance of large herbivores began even before the arrival of people there and happened gradually. The extinction of mammoths and other mammals adds up to a typical picture that paleontologists describe for older groups of animals, such as dinosaurs or ammonite marine cephalopods. One of the researchers wittily compared it to Haydn's 45th symphony, in which the musicians take turns leaving the orchestra before the end of the piece.
The aforementioned American researchers consider climate to be the cause of extinction. However, the facts pointed out by the founders of paleontology remain facts. For some reason, the evolution of groups of organisms goes in a certain direction, just as the individual development of an individual occurs unidirectionally - from youth to old age. The characteristics of the mechanism of "phylogenetic aging", proposed by the classics of paleontology, are rather vague. Here you can clarify something if you turn to modern gerontology - the science of aging organisms. There are several dozen hypotheses proposed to explain the mechanism of aging of an individual. They often note that some cells cannot reproduce their exact copies indefinitely. With each division, either DNA breaks occur in them, or a reduction in the length of some sections of chromosomes, or something else that eventually leads to the impossibility of further divisions. It is possible that because of this, the rejuvenation of “worn out” cells, and hence tissues and organs, becomes impossible. The result is old age and natural death. It may be that in the entire genome something is shortened with each copying, and this eventually leads to the impossibility of its reproduction, and hence to the extinction of the species. And although today the question of the causes of extinction remains open, this last hypothesis deserves attention.
If this assumption is correct, then attempts to "revive" mammoths are doomed to failure, but some scientists continue to experiment. There were reports in the media that the mammoth was about to be cloned. Japanese scientists managed to clone mouse cells that had been in the freezer for several years, and now they seem to be ready to move on to larger projects.
However, here the age-old question of biology arises: to what extent can the results of laboratory experiments on a model object be extrapolated to what happens in nature? Several years in a freezer are not thousands of years in the tundra, where the remains could thaw and freeze again many times. During a long stay in the permafrost, the cells cannot remain intact. Only fragments of molecules remain from them, so it is not possible to clone them.
Basically, damage occurs due to the fact that the water contained in the cells crystallizes and breaks the cellular structures. All of the mammoth corpses discovered so far are badly damaged when compared to a mouse from a freezer. Therefore, scientists are pinning their hopes on frozen mammoth spermatozoa. They are extremely water-poor and can withstand freezing better than normal cells. But the likelihood of such a find is negligible. So for now, mammoth cloning looks like a lost cause.
Mammoth fauna of Yakutsk
Northeastern Federal University
Them. M.K. Amosova
medical institute
on the topic: Mammoth fauna of Yakutia
Completed by: Aital Popov Innokentevich LD-107-1 gr.
Checked by: Pestereva Kunney Aidarovna
Yakutsk 2013
Mammoths and mammoth fauna
Yakut mammoth
woolly mammoth
About the history of mammoth finds
Shandrin mammoth
Mammoth Dima
Yukagir mammoth
Mammoth Lyuba
Mammoth Zhenya
Mammoths and mammoth fauna
The modern fauna of Eurasia and North America is only a remnant of the rich and diverse fauna of the glacial, or Quaternary period- Pleistocene, most famous representative which was a huge northern elephant, a mammoth. That is why it is often called mammoth. The origins of the mammoth fauna go back to the very beginning of the Quaternary period, and even to the Pliocene (1.8 - 1.5 million years ago), but it was formed mainly during a series of cold and warm epochs of the Pleistocene period. This unique animal community flourished during the Wurm glaciation, about 100,000 years ago.
The mammoth fauna included about 80 species of mammals, which, thanks to a number of anatomical, physiological, and behavioral adaptations, managed to adapt to living in the cold continental climate of periglacial forest-steppe and tundra-steppe regions with their permafrost, severe winters with little snow, and powerful summer insolation. Approximately at the turn of the Holocene, about 11 thousand years ago, due to a sharp warming and humidification of the climate, which led to the thawing of the tundra-steppes and other fundamental changes in landscapes, the mammoth fauna disintegrated. Some species, such as the mammoth itself, woolly rhinoceros, giant deer, cave lion and others, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A number of large species of calluses and ungulates - wild camels, horses, yaks, saiga have survived in the steppes of Central Asia, some others have adapted to life in completely different natural areas(bison, kulan); many such as reindeer, musk ox, arctic fox, wolverine, hare and others, were forced far to the north and sharply reduced their area of distribution. The reasons for the extinction of the mammoth fauna are not completely known. Over the long history of its existence, it experienced already warm interglacial periods, and was then able to survive. Obviously, the last warming has caused a more significant restructuring of the natural environment, and perhaps the species themselves have exhausted their evolutionary possibilities.
Mammoths, woolly (Mammuthus primigenius) and Columbian (Mammuthus columbi), lived in the Pleistocene-Holocene on a vast territory: from southern and central Europe to Chukotka, northern China and Japan (Hokkaido Island), as well as in North America. The time of existence of the Columbian mammoth is 250-10, woolly 300-4 thousand years ago (some researchers also refer to the genus Mammuthus the southern (2300-700 thousand years) and trogontheric (750-135 thousand years) elephants). Contrary to popular belief, mammoths were not the ancestors of modern elephants: they appeared on earth later and died out without even leaving distant descendants. Mammoths roamed in small herds, adhering to river valleys and feeding on grass, branches of trees and shrubs. Such herds were very mobile - it was not easy to collect the required amount of food in the tundra steppe. The size of the mammoths was quite impressive: large males could reach a height of 3.5 meters, and their tusks were up to 4 meters long and weighed about 100 kilograms. A powerful coat, 70-80 cm long, protected the mammoths from the cold. Average life expectancy was 45-50, maximum 80 years. The main reason for the extinction of these highly specialized animals is a sharp warming and humidification of the climate at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene, snowy winters, as well as an extensive marine transgression that flooded the shelf of Eurasia and North America.
Structural features of the limbs and trunk, body proportions, shape and size of mammoth tusks indicate that, like modern elephants, it ate various plant foods. With the help of tusks, animals dug out food from under the snow, tore off the bark of trees; vein ice was mined, which was used in winter instead of water. For grinding food, the mammoth had only one very large tooth on each side of the upper and lower jaws at the same time. The chewing surface of these teeth was a wide, long plate covered with transverse enamel ridges. Apparently, in the warm season, the animals fed mainly on grassy vegetation. Grasses and sedges prevailed in the intestines and oral cavity of mammoths that died in the summer, lingonberry bushes, green mosses and thin shoots of willow, birch, and alder were found in small quantities. The weight of an adult mammoth's stomach filled with food could reach 240 kg. It can be assumed that in winter, especially in the snowy season, the shoots of trees and shrubs acquired the main importance in the nutrition of animals. The huge amount of food consumed made mammoths, like modern elephants, lead a mobile lifestyle and often change their feeding areas.
Adult mammoths were massive animals, with relatively long legs and a short torso. Their height at the withers reached 3.5 m in males and 3 m in females. characteristic feature appearance mammoth had a sharp sloping back, and for old males - a pronounced cervical interception between the "hump" and the head. In mammoths, these exterior features were softened, and the upper line of the head-back was a single arc slightly curved upwards. Such an arc is also present in adult mammoths, as well as in modern elephants, and is associated, purely mechanically, with maintaining a huge weight. internal organs. The mammoth's head was larger than that of modern elephants. The ears are small, oval elongated, 5-6 times smaller than those of the Asian elephant, and 15-16 times smaller than those of the African. The rostral part of the skull was rather narrow, the alveoli of the tusks were located very close to each other, and the base of the trunk rested on them. The tusks are more powerful than those of the African and Asian elephants: their length in old males reached 4 m with a base diameter of 16-18 cm, in addition, they were twisted up and inward. The tusks of females were smaller (2-2.2 m, diameter at the base 8-10 cm) and almost straight. The ends of the tusks, in connection with the peculiarities of foraging, were usually erased only from the outside. The legs of the mammoths were massive, five-fingered, with 3 small hooves on the front and 4 on the hind limbs; the feet are rounded, their diameter in adults was 40-45 cm. The special arrangement of the bones of the hand contributed to its greater compactness, and loose subcutaneous tissue and elastic skin allowed the foot to expand and increase its area on soft marshy soils. But still, the most unique feature of the appearance of the mammoth is its thick coat, which consisted of three types of hair: undercoat, intermediate and coverts, or guard hairs. The topography and coloration of the coat was relatively the same in males and females: on the forehead and on the crown of the head grew a hat of black coarse hair directed forward, 15-20 cm long, and the trunk and ears were covered with undercoat and awn of brown or brown color. The entire body of the mammoth was also covered with long, 80-90 cm outer hair, under which a thick yellowish undercoat was hidden. The color of the skin of the body was light yellow or brown, dark pigment spots were observed on areas free from hair. Mammoths molted for the winter; winter coat was thicker and lighter than summer.
Mammoths had a special relationship with primitive man. The remains of a mammoth at the sites of an early Paleolithic man were quite rare and belonged mainly to young individuals. One gets the impression that primitive hunters at that time did not often hunt mammoths, and the hunt for these huge animals was rather an accidental event. In the settlements of the Late Paleolithic, the picture changes dramatically: the number of bones increases, the ratio of males, females and young animals caught approaches the natural structure of the herd. Hunting for mammoths and other large animals of that period is no longer selective, but mass; The main method of catching animals is driving them onto rocky cliffs, into trapping pits, on the fragile ice of rivers and lakes, into marshy areas of marshes and on rafts. The driven animals were finished off with stones, darts and stone-tipped spears. Mammoth meat was used for food, tusks were used to make weapons and handicrafts, bones, skulls and skins were used to build dwellings and ritual structures. The mass hunting of people of the Late Paleolithic, the growth in the number of tribes of hunters, the improvement of hunting tools and methods of extraction against the background of constantly deteriorating living conditions associated with changes in familiar landscapes, according to some researchers, played a decisive role in the fate of these animals.
The importance of mammoths in the life of primitive people is evidenced by the fact that even 20-30 thousand years ago, artists of the Cro-Magnon era depicted mammoths on stone and bone, using flint chisels and shaving brushes with ocher, iron oxide and manganese oxides. Previously, the paint was rubbed with fat or bone marrow. Flat images were painted on the walls of caves, on plates of slate and graphite, on fragments of tusks; sculptural - were created from bone, marl or slate using flint chisels. It is very possible that such figurines were used as talismans, ancestral totems, or played another ritual role. Despite the limited means of expression, many of the images are very artistic, and quite accurately convey the appearance of the fossil giants.
During the 18th - 19th centuries, a little more than twenty reliable finds of mammoth remains in the form of frozen carcasses, their parts, skeletons with remnants of soft tissues and skin are known in Siberia. It can also be assumed that some of the finds remained unknown to science, many were found out too late and could not be studied. Using the example of the mammoth Adams, discovered in 1799 on the Bykovsky Peninsula, it is clear that news about the found animals came to the Academy of Sciences only a few years after they were discovered, and it was not easy to get to the far corners of Siberia even in the second half of the 20th century. . The great difficulty was the extraction of the corpse from the frozen ground and its transportation. The excavation and delivery of a mammoth discovered in the Berezovka River valley in 1900 (undoubtedly the most significant of the paleozoological finds of the early 20th century) can be called heroic without exaggeration.
In the 20th century, the number of finds of mammoth remains in Siberia doubled. This is due to the extensive development of the North, the rapid development of transport and communications, and the rise in the cultural level of the population. The first complex expedition using modern technology there was a trip for the Taimyr mammoth, found in 1948 on an unnamed river, later called the Mammoth River. The extraction of the remains of animals “soldered” into the permafrost has become noticeably easier today thanks to the use of motor pumps that defrost and erode the soil with the help of water. A remarkable monument of nature should be considered the "cemetery" of mammoths, discovered by N.F. Grigoriev in 1947 on the Berelekh River (the left tributary of the Indigirka River) in Yakutia. For 200 meters, the river bank here is covered with a scattering of mammoth bones washed out of the coastal slope.
Studying the Magadan (1977) and Yamal (1988) mammoths, scientists managed to clarify not only many questions of the anatomy and morphology of mammoths, but also to draw a number of important conclusions about their habitat and the causes of extinction. The last few years have brought new remarkable finds in Siberia: special mention should be made of the Yukagir mammoth (2002), which represents a scientifically unique material (the head of an adult mammoth was found with remnants of soft tissues and wool) and a baby mammoth found in 2007 in the river basin Yuribey on Yamal. Outside of Russia, it is necessary to note the finds of mammoth remains made by American scientists in Alaska, as well as the unique "cemetery-trap" with the remains of more than 100 mammoths, discovered by L. Agenbrod in the town of Hot Springs (South Dakota, USA) in 1974.
mammoth yakutsk fauna glacial
The exhibits of the mammoth hall are unique - after all, the animals presented here have already disappeared from the face of the earth several thousand years ago. Some of the most significant of them need to be discussed in more detail.
Yakut mammoth
A significant part of all unique finds of mammoths, woolly rhinos, bison, musk oxen, cave lions and other animals of a bygone era have been discovered in Yakutia.
Map of mammoth finds
The first changed representative of the southern elephants was the steppe mammoth (height at the withers - up to 5 m). The steppe mammoth in the early Pleistocene era was still trying to fight the cold, migrating south in winter and north in summer. A subspecies of the steppe mammoth - the Khazar mammoth - became the ancestor of the woolly mammoth. According to the great Russian researcher of fossils and modern elephants V.E. Garutta, the word "mammoth" is closer to the Estonian "mammut" (underground mole). The mammoth population appeared 1 - 2 million years ago. The development of these giants flourished at the end of the Pleistocene (100 - 10 thousand years ago). On the territory of Yakutia, in the lower reaches of the interfluve of the Indigirka and Kolyma, a skull of a mammoth that lived 49 thousand years ago was found. This is the oldest mammoth found in Yakutia.
woolly mammoth
woolly mammoth
woolly mammoth- the most exotic animal of the ice age, is its symbol. Real giants, mammoths at the withers reached 3.5 m and weighed 4 - 6 tons. From the cold, mammoths were protected by thick long wool with a developed undercoat, which on the shoulders, hips and sides was more than a meter long, as well as a layer of fat up to 9 cm thick. 12 - 13 thousand years ago, mammoths lived throughout Northern Eurasia and much of North America. Due to the warming of the climate, the habitats of mammoths - the tundra-steppes - have decreased. Mammoths migrated to the north of the mainland and for the last 9-10 thousand years lived on a narrow strip of land along the Arctic coast of Eurasia, which is now mostly flooded by the sea. The last mammoths lived on Wrangel Island, where they died out about 3,500 years ago. Mammoths are herbivorous, fed mainly on herbaceous plants (cereals, sedge, forbs), small shrubs (dwarf birches, willows), tree shoots and moss. In winter, in order to feed themselves, they raked the snow with their forelimbs and extremely developed upper incisors-tusks in search of food, the length of which in large males was more than 4 meters, and they weighed about 100 kg. Mammoth teeth were well adapted for grinding coarse food. Each of the 4 teeth of a mammoth changed five times during its life. A mammoth usually ate 200-300 kg of vegetation per day, i.e. he had to eat 18-20 hours a day and move all the time in search of new pastures.
Hunting of ancient people for a mammoth
mammoth hunting
Ancient people were well adapted to the cold conditions of the Ice Age: they knew how to make fire, made tools, and buried their dead tribesmen. Thanks to mammoths, the rulers of the northern circumpolar steppes and tundra, ancient man survived in harsh conditions: they gave him food and clothing, shelter, and sheltered him from the cold. So, mammoth meat, subcutaneous and abdominal fat were used for food; for clothes - skins, veins, wool; for the manufacture of dwellings, tools, hunting equipment and handicrafts - tusks and bones. Usually only the most experienced hunters (4-5 people) went to hunt mammoths. The leader chose a victim (a pregnant female or a lone male), then spears were thrown into the right or left side of the mammoth. The pursuit of the wounded animal lasted 5-7 days. As the climate changed, mammoths moved further east and north. According to researchers, it is possible that these animal migrations served as an impetus for the first hunters to move to the north of Asia.
One of the hypotheses of the reasons for the disappearance of mammoths
\To find out the reasons for the disappearance of representatives of the mammoth fauna, many different hypotheses were put forward, including cosmic radiation, infectious diseases, the Flood, and natural disasters. Today, most scientists are inclined to believe that the main reason was the rapid warming of the climate at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene. About 10,000 years ago, a kind of ecological catastrophy: quite suddenly, the climate began to "warm up", the retreat of glaciers and the reduction in the area occupied by permafrost began. On the territory of Yakutia, the severity of winter and the southern border of permafrost remained unchanged, although in general the climate and ice conditions were milder than today. The researchers note that mammoths accustomed to living in a cold climate during the period of warming may have had a disruption in their physiological metabolism, they became less resistant to infectious diseases, which led to the degradation of their populations. Yes, in soft tissues heads of the Yukagir mammoth, organisms close to helminths were found. Cases of bone and dental diseases (dental caries, tusks with abnormal painful forms) are known. The beginning of climate warming also strongly affected the regime of precipitation and vegetation.
Mammoth. Siegsdorfer Mammoth
More precipitation began to fall, the sea level rose. The former Arctic steppe began to be replaced by tundra, and in South and Central Yakutia by taiga. Neither the tundra nor the taiga could feed such large herbivores as mammoths. In winter, more snow began to fall, heavy snowfalls complicated the survival of mammoths. And in summer the soils thawed and swamped. Animals accustomed to moving on a relatively hard surface could not exist in swampy areas. All this led to their mass death. They died in snowdrifts, suffered from starvation, drowned in thermokarst traps - caves. Probably, these factors are associated with the formation of the Berelekh mammoth cemetery in Eastern Yakutia, where, according to scientists, about 160 individuals died.
About the history of mammoth finds
Bone remains of mammoths in the territory of Yakutia, as well as throughout Russia, have been found for a long time. The first information about such finds was reported by the Amsterdam burgomaster Witsen in 1692 in his "Notes on a Journey through North-Eastern Siberia". Somewhat later, in 1704, Izbrant Ides wrote about Siberian mammoths, who, on the orders of Peter I, traveled across Siberia to China. In particular, he was the first to collect very interesting information about the fact that in Siberia locals on the banks of rivers and lakes, from time to time, whole carcasses of mammoths were found. In 1720, Peter the Great handed over to the governor of Siberia A.M. Cherkassky oral decree to search for the "intact skeleton" of the mammoth. The territory of Yakutia accounts for about 80% of all finds of the remains of mammoths in the world and other fossil animals with preserved soft tissues.
mammoth adams
Having gone to the place, he discovered the skeleton of a mammoth, eaten by wild animals and dogs. The skin coverings were preserved on the mammoth's head, one ear, dried eyes and brain also survived, and on the side on which he lay there was skin with thick long hair. Thanks to the selfless efforts of the zoologist, the skeleton was brought to St. Petersburg in the same year. So, in 1808, for the first time in the world, a complete skeleton of a mammoth, mammoth Adams, was mounted. Currently, he, like the baby mammoth Dima, is on display at the Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Mammoth Adams in Mt. Saint Petersburg
Later, this remarkable find was called the Adams mammoth. One of the sensational finds that gained worldwide fame was the carcass of the Berezovsky mammoth. His burial was discovered in 1900 on the banks of the Berezovka (right tributary of the Kolyma River) by the hunter S. Tarabukin. The head of a mammoth with skin was exposed in an earthen collapse, in places it was gnawed by wolves. The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, having received news of a unique find of a mammoth in Yakutia, immediately equipped an expedition led by zoologist O.F. Hertz. As a result of excavations, an almost complete carcass of a mammoth was removed in parts from frozen soils. The Berezovsky mammoth was of great scientific importance, because for the first time an almost complete mammoth carcass fell into the hands of researchers. Judging by the presence of remnants of unchewed bunches of herbs found in the oral cavity and teeth, the presumed time of death of the mammoth is the end of summer. Based on the results of research on the Berezovsky mammoth, several volumes of scientific papers were published.
Berezovsky mammoth
In 1910, the remains of a mammoth corpse were excavated, found in 1906 by A. Gorokhov on the Eterikan River, on Bol Island. Lyakhovsky. This mammoth has preserved an almost complete skeleton, fragments of soft tissues on the head and other parts of the body, as well as hair and remains of stomach contents. K.A. Vollosovich, who unearthed the mammoth, sold it to Count A.V. Stenbock-Fermor, who, in turn, donated it to the Paris Museum of Natural History. Interest in the finds of mammoths and other fossil animals especially increased after the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences Academician V.L. Komarov in 1932 signed an appeal to the population of the country "On the findings of fossil animals." The appeal stated that the Academy of Sciences would give a cash reward of up to 1,000 rubles for a valuable find.
Berelekh mammoth cemetery
In 1970, on the left bank of the Berelekh River, the left tributary of the Indigirka River (90 km northwest of the village of Chokurdakh of the Allaikhov Ulus), a huge accumulation of bone remains was found that belonged to about 160 mammoths that lived 13 thousand years ago. Nearby was the dwelling of ancient hunters. In terms of quantity and quality of preserved fragments of mammoth bodies, the Berelekh cemetery is the largest in the world. It testifies to the mass death of animals that have weakened and fallen into a snow drift.
Berelekh mammoth cemetery. Yakutia
Currently, paleontological materials from the Berelekhsky cemetery are stored at the Institute of Geology of Diamond and Precious Metals of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the mountains. Yakutsk.
Shandrin mammoth
In 1971, on the right bank of the Shandrin River, which flows into a channel of the Indigirka River delta, D. Kuzmin discovered the skeleton of a mammoth that lived 41,000 years ago. Inside the skeleton was a frozen lump of innards. In the gastrointestinal tract, plant remains were found, consisting of herbs, twigs, shrubs, seeds.
Shandrin mammoth. Yakutia
So, thanks to this, one of the five unique content remnants gastrointestinal tract mammoths (section size 70x35 cm), it was possible to find out the diet of the animal. The mammoth was a large male of 60 years old and apparently died of old age and physical exhaustion. The skeleton of the Shandra mammoth is kept at the Institute of History and Philosophy of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Mammoth Dima
Mammoth excavations. Yakutia
In 1977, a well-preserved 7-8-month-old mammoth cub was discovered in the Kolyma River basin.
It was a touching and sad sight for the prospectors who discovered the baby mammoth Dima (so he was named after the spring of the same name, in the decay of which he was found): he was lying on his side with mournfully outstretched legs, with his eyes closed and a slightly crumpled trunk.
Mammoth Dima
The find immediately became a worldwide sensation due to its excellent preservation and possible cause mammoth death. The poet Stepan Shchipachev composed a touching poem about a mammoth baby who has fallen behind his mammoth mother, and an animated film about the unfortunate mammoth was made.
Yukagir mammoth
In 2002, near the Muksunuokha River, 30 km from the village of Yukagir, schoolchildren Innokenty and Grigory Gorokhov found the head of a male mammoth. In 2003 - 2004 the rest of the corpse was excavated.
The most well-preserved head is with tusks, with most of the skin, left ear and eye socket, as well as the left front leg, consisting of a forearm and with muscles and tendons. Of the remaining parts, cervical and thoracic vertebrae, part of the ribs, shoulder blades, the right humerus, part of the entrails, and wool were found.
Yukagir mammoth. Yakutia
According to radiocarbon analysis, the mammoth lived 18 thousand years ago. The male, about 3 m tall at the withers and weighing 4 - 5 tons, died at the age of 40 - 50 years (for comparison: the average life expectancy of modern elephants is 60 - 70 years), probably after falling into a pit. At present, everyone can see the mammoth head model at the Mammoth Museum of the Federal State Scientific Institution "Institute of Applied Ecology of the North" in the mountains. Yakutsk.
Mammoth Lyuba
Mammoth Lyuba -a fossil female mammoth found in May 2007 by reindeer herder Yuri Khudi in the upper reaches of the Yuribey River on the Yamal Peninsula. Received the name "Lyuba" in honor of the reindeer breeder's wife. The mammoth cub is unique in that it surpasses all previously discovered fossil remains of mammoths in terms of safety: the body is completely preserved, with the exception of the hairline and hooves.
The study of the remains was carried out by a team of scientists from Russia, the USA, Japan and France: first, for a thorough planning of the autopsy, a CT scan of the body was performed at Tokyo Jikei University, then an autopsy was performed on the basis of the Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg. Scientists have determined that the mammoth died about 40 thousand years ago at the age of 1 month. It is assumed that after the mammoth drowned and suffocated in the clay mass, the body was preserved under the influence of lactobacilli, which ensured its preservation for tens of thousands of years in the permafrost, and then prevented the decomposition of the body and its destruction by scavengers for almost a year after how it was washed out of the permafrost by the current of the river (since the body of the mammoth was found in May 2007, that is, before the river opens up, scientists assume that it was brought to the surface by the current a year before the discovery, during the flood in June 2006) .
Mammoth Zhenya
Mammoth Zhenya (official name - Sopkarginsky mammoth) is an adult specimen of a fossil mammoth. Found near Cape Sopochnaya Karga, Taimyr Dolgano-Nenetsky District, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Russia.
The carcass of a mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago was discovered in Taimyr at the end of August 2012 by 11-year-old Yevgeny Salinder. The boy told his parents about the find at Cape Sopochnaya Karga, and they informed the polar explorers of the weather station located three kilometers from the find. On October 2, 2012, the mammoth carcass was delivered to Dudinka.
In the process of work, the organizers of the expedition realized that they were dealing with a unique specimen: it was not just a skeleton, but a mammoth carcass weighing half a ton, with preserved fragments of skin, meat, fat, and even some organs. It turned out that in the hump of the mammoth there are no large processes of the thoracic vertebrae, as previously thought, in the hump the mammoth accumulated powerful reserves of fat for the winter. Apparently the mammoth Zhenya died in the summer, since his hump was not yet large enough and there was no winter undercoat. Mammoth Zhenya was 15-16 years old at the time of his death.
The last time the carcass of an adult mammoth was found by the expedition of O.F. Hertz (Yakut.) Russian. and E.V. Pfitzenmayer in 1901 on the Berezovka River near Srednekolymsk.
List of literature used
1.Book Tikhonov A.N. "Mammoth"
North-Eastern Federal University. M.K. Amosova Medical Institute SUMMARY on the topic: Mammoth f
More works
1The article describes Short story creation of collections of the remains of Quaternary faunas (including the imammoth fauna) in the Geological Museum of the State Institute of Global Mineral Medicine of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. To date, the collection of mammoth fauna in this museum contains more than 7,000 exhibits, among which almost all large mammals are represented.
mammoth fauna
geological museum
Quaternary
1. Belolyubsky I.N., Boeskorov G.G., Sergeenko A.I., Tomshin M.D. Catalog of the collection of Quaternary mammals of the Geological Museum of the State Institute of Organic Mineral Medicine SB RAS. - Yakutsk: Publishing house of YaNTs SB RAS, 2008. - 204 p.
In the history of the Geological Museum of the IGABM SB RAS, the scientific subject of the study of the Quaternary period has its roots. The idea of organizing a museum as a repository of natural objects and systematic collections reflecting the problems of studying its geological structure belongs to the stratigrapher-paleontologist A.S. Kashirtsev. The organization of the museum began with the decision of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences dated July 11, 1958, and in January 1960. it was already open to the public. The Museum was located in the building of the Presidium of the YaF of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and A.S. Kashirtsev was appointed its first head. The first expositions of the museum were not numerous and were represented by individual paleontological finds. Over time, the museum fund was replenished with many new samples and unique exhibits, the systematics of its sections expanded and changed. In subsequent years, the geological museum was headed by: Honored Geologist of the YASSR A.V. Aleksandrov (1964-1970), Honored Scientist of Yakutia, Professor B.V. Oleinikov (1970-2000). Since 2000 The work of the museum is supervised by the candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences M.D.Tomshin.
Thanks to the efforts of B.S. Rusanov and N.V. Chersky, a branch of the Mammoth Committee of the USSR Academy of Sciences was organized in Yakutsk at the Yakutsk Scientific Center and the formation of a collection of mammoth fauna was started, which was partially housed in the Geological Museum of the Nuclear Physics Department of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, created in 1958. Since that time, a systematic study of the fauna of the ice age has been carried out in Yakutia. For this purpose, a laboratory of Quaternary geology and geomorphology was created at the Institute, headed by B.S. Rusanov (1908-1979), a prominent specialist in the field of cartography, placer geology, a researcher of the Quaternary fauna and flora of Yakutia. B.S. Rusanov during his work organized numerous expeditions to study the mammoth fauna, during which many exhibits of world value were found.
During the half-century period of the Institute's existence, many forces of knowledge have been given to the study of the Cenozoic stage of the Earth's development on the territory of Yakutia by well-known scientists B.S. Rusanov, P.A. Lazarev, O.V. Grinenko, A.I. Tomskaya and others. Their scientific works are now primarily used in the study of the palynology of the Pleistocene deposits, the study of the fauna of the Ice Age, and the stratigraphy of the entire Cenozoic of Yakutia. During the years 1970-1990, the collection of the Geological Museum of mammoth fauna was intensively replenished. During this period, with the participation of the museum staff, such large finds as the skeletons of the Tirekhtyakh (1971), Shandrinsky (1971), Akan (1986) and Khromsky (1988) mammoths were excavated and brought to Yakutsk; a completely preserved mammoth leg from the Berelekh "cemetery" of mammoths (1970), the remains of the corpse of the Abyi mammoth (1990); part of the skin of the Kularsky (Kieng-Yuryakhsky) mammoth (1980), the skeleton of the Churapcha woolly rhinoceros (1972), the skeleton of a semi-fossil bowhead whale (1973), the remains of fossil horses, the skulls of cave lions, etc. Dozens of sections of Quaternary deposits were studied in the Far North and Central Yakutia. Almost every section was brought and paleontological material in the form of bone remains of animals of the mammoth fauna. B.S.Rusanov, P.A.Lazarev and O.V.Grinenko brought to the museum more than 1.5 thousand bones of mammoths and some other fossil animals from the Berelekh “cemetery” of mammoths alone.
It should be noted that the collections of P.A. Lazarev over the years of his work at the Institute of Geology make up about a third of all the exhibits on the mammoth fauna of the Geological Museum of the State Institute of Global Mineral Medicine of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. With the personal participation of P.A. Lazarev in the 1960-1980s, the main part of the exhibits of extinct animals of the Ice Age was excavated, brought to Yakutsk and mounted: the leg of the Berelekh mammoth, the skeletons of the Akan, Tirekhtyakh, Khrom and Allaikhov mammoths, the Churapcha woolly rhinoceros, and the fossil bowhead whale. Many of these exhibits are the "golden fund" of the museums of the Republic of Sakha, they are known far beyond the borders of Yakutia.
V last years we have carried out a detailed systematization of the osteological collection of the remains of mammals of the Quaternary period, stored in the Geological Museum of the State Institute of Global Mineral Medicine of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (more than 7 thousand storage units). The systematic and chronological affiliation of many exhibits has been redefined, done detailed description the main, most valuable, exhibits. Information about the collection of fossil mammals-animals of the Pliocene-Early Neopleistocene Olerian fauna, Middle Neopleistocene faunas and Late Neopleistocene mammoth fauna is presented in the form of the "Catalogue of the collection of Quaternary mammals of the Geological Museum of the State Institute of Organic Bioorganic Medicine of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences" . Also, in this work, a number of basic reference sections of the Quaternary deposits of Yakutia are briefly described and a correlation is made between a number of sections of the Pleistocene of Western and Eastern Yakutia. To date, the Geological Museum of the State Institute of Global Bioorganic Animals of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences has collected the largest collection of fossil animals in the north-east of Russia that inhabited the territory of Yakutia during the Pleistocene and the Pliocene. The most significant collections are of the late Pleistocene mammoth fauna (120-10 thousand years ago), which includes: woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blum.), woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis Blum.), Lena horse (Equus lenensis Russ.), primitive bison ( Bison priscus Boj.), primitive musk ox (Ovibos pallantis HSmith), northern (Rangifer tarantus L.) and noble (Cervus elaphus L.) deer, elk (Alces sp.), cave lion (Panthera spelaea Goldfuss), wolf (Canis lupus L. .) and etc. This museum has collections of bone remains of mammals that lived on the territory of Yakutia in the late Pliocene - early Pleistocene, related to the Kolera fauna (basins of the Kolyma, Indigirka, Yana rivers): the trogontheric (steppe) mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii (Pohlig, 1885), Vera's horse (Equus verae Sher), broad-browed elk (Cervalces latifrons Johnson), proto-musk ox (Praeovibos sp.), sorgelias (Soergelia sp.), etc.
Bibliographic link
Belolyubsky I.N., Boeskorov G.G. COLLECTIONS OF THE MAMMOTH FAUNA IN THE GEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF THE IGABM SB RAS // International Journal of Applied and Fundamental Research. - 2013. - No. 8-2. - S. 250-251;URL: https://applied-research.ru/ru/article/view?id=3827 (date of access: 10/24/2019). We bring to your attention the journals published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural History"
It is impossible to consider the history of the development of something or someone in isolation from the environment that surrounds it. Therefore, today I invite you to talk about what kind of world surrounded our ancestors.
Pleistocene landscape.
Source: https://ru.wikipedia.org/
Immediately I propose to limit our story to space-time frames. Since we live in the northern part of Eurasia, this territory is closest to us, and therefore let's limit ourselves to it. In Northern Eurasia, the first representatives Homosapiens appeared about 50 thousand years ago. Thus, it is logical to confine ourselves to these time frames in our story. This is the time of the so-called "last ice age". It is named last for the reason that during the Pleistocene there were repeated changes of cold and warm epochs. In cold epochs, especially in the northern hemisphere, there was a development of ice sheets, a drop in the level of the world ocean, the climate in such epochs was much more severe than the present. During the warm intervals of the "interglacial" ice caps were reduced, the level of the world ocean rose (sometimes even higher than in modern times), the climate was mild and warm.
The last ice age began about 110 thousand years ago. and ended about 10-9.5 thousand years ago, it was replaced by the modern interglacial, called the Holocene. Thus, most of the time of human existence in Northern Eurasia falls precisely on ice Age. So, what was the nature of Northern Eurasia during the Ice Age?
Perhaps we should start with the climate that formed the natural environment. The climate during the ice age was cold, harsh and sharply continental. In the north of Europe and in some areas of the north modern Russia extensive glaciations were formed, covering the entire space (Fig. 1). In the mountains of the Urals, the Caucasus, Southern and Eastern Siberia, glaciations were mountain-valley, that is, they arose only in the mountains and foothill valleys. As a result of the formation of glaciers that took moisture from the atmosphere, very little snow fell in the winter season, which led to the development of a zone of continuous “permafrost”, which was found even in the north of modern Kazakhstan. In addition, glaciations contributed to very strong winds that carried sand and dust for many hundreds of kilometers, forming real dunes and manes in some places.
In such harsh conditions, under the influence of strong winds and on frozen soils, trees could not grow, so the area of \u200b\u200bforests was reduced. Forests huddled mainly in the floodplains of the rivers, depressions of the relief and along the slopes of the mountains. Vast areas were occupied by dry grassy plains, called tundra-steppes. These unique landscapes have no direct modern analogues; they combined the features of the current tundra, steppe and forest-steppe. Due to the abundant sunlight, which was not absorbed by the forest cover, the tundra-steppes received a sufficient amount of solar energy for growth. The thawing of the permafrost in summer provided water for herbaceous plants. Thus, during the warm period, enough grass was formed to feed herds of many thousands of ungulates not only in summer, but also in the cold season. In autumn, the grass dried up and turned into “hay on the vine”. In this form, the grass remained standing until the next spring, and the small amount of snow that fell allowed the animals to easily get it even in winter.
Animals that lived in the tundra steppe and adapted to these harsh conditions formed a specific community called the “Mammoth Fauna” (this is the name given to a group of mammals that lived on the territory of Northern Eurasia in the late Pleistocene) (Fig. 2).
The entire composition of the mammoth fauna can be divided into two large groups: consumers of plant biomass are herbivores; consumers of animal biomass are carnivores or predators. Each group was in turn divided into smaller groups. So, among the herbivores there were those who ate almost exclusively grass (saiga, horses, rhinos, musk oxen, reindeer), there were those who consumed both grass and tree and shrub food (mammoths, bison, noble and giant deer), and someone preferred to feed on foliage and branches of shrubs and trees (roe deer, elk, beavers). Predators also varied. Small ones, like foxes and arctic foxes, fed on small rodents. The wolf and wolverine mainly preyed on medium-sized animals such as roe deer, reindeer and saiga. Of course, the main predator of that time was the cave lion, which preyed on all large animals, except perhaps for the adult mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. Not less, and possibly more dangerous predator were cave hyenas, which not only could successfully hunt large ungulates, but also actively consumed carrion. Moreover, their powerful jaws were so strong that they made it possible to gnaw the bones of the largest representatives of the mammoth fauna - the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. This is confirmed by the large number of gnawed remains of these animals in the cave lairs of hyenas.
Here is just the most generalized list of animals of the mammoth fauna. Naturally, it was noticeably more diverse, so mountain goats and sheep were often found in the foothills, and with them red wolves and snow leopards. On the Far East Himalayan bears lived, gazelles lived in Mongolia and Transbaikalia, and gazelles in Central Asia. However, the most important feature of the entire mammoth fauna was the ubiquitous distribution of such animals as mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, horse, reindeer, saiga, musk ox, cave lion and cave hyena (Fig. 3).
Separately, I would like to note the similarity of the mammoth fauna with the fauna of the modern African savannah. So, here and there one could meet elephants and rhinos, horses, various antelopes, and large bulls. Even such seemingly exotic predators as hyenas and lions, and they felt great in the ice age. Ecological analogues (with a certain degree of conditionality) of the animals of the African savannas were distributed on all continents (except Antarctica). So what is the reason for this amazing similarity? Everything is very simple, all these faunas were formed on similar landscapes - namely, in the conditions of vast plains overgrown with a lot of grass. These grassy plains formed excellent pastures that were able to feed huge herds of herbivores, and those in turn were predators. And those and others actively fertilized the soil with their bodies and excrement. During the ice age, such pastures existed on all continents, except for Antarctica, of course. Therefore, the fauna that inhabited these pastures on all continents were similar in ecological terms.
It is not surprising that our ancestors easily adapted to new conditions on all continents, wherever they went. After all, the most important thing, namely, game animals, were similar to those to which they were accustomed for millions of years of life in Africa. Apparently, this helped our distant ancestors to successfully settle throughout the planet.
Berezovsky mammoth. Reconstruction of a mammoth found in 1926 in Siberia. Zoo museum. Petersburg.
MAMMUT FAUNA -mammoth, musk ox, cave bear, deer, woolly rhinoceros and other animals that lived during the late glaciation (Pleistocene). When mammoths died out, to the south. a manufacturing economy emerged. For example, sites with the earliest elements of a productive economy of the Zarzi B type date back to 12000+400, Khotu - from 11860+80 to 9190±590, Belt - 11489±550, Jarmo - 11240 + 300, etc. Mammoths: Kunda (tusks) - 9780 + 260, Berelekh (cloth) - 10370 + 90, Bones (bone) - 11000 + 200, Yudinovka (bone) - 13650 + 200, 138300 + 850, Eliseevich (bone) -14470+180, 15600+200 thousand years ago. Apparently, the causes that caused the death of mammoths and the emergence of a new type of economy acted simultaneously, and they are associated with a sharp change in natural conditions, which also caused the melting of the glacier.
At the end of the glacial period in Europe, huge herds of animals grazed - p. deer, bison, horses (in the Irish deer, the width of the horns reached 4 m). Gone are the glaciers, the grass has become less. Mammoths and other large herbivores went for grass on p. They climbed to Taimyr, Chukotka, but everywhere, instead of the fertile steppes and forest-steppes of the glacial zone, they were met by the waters of the Arctic Ocean ... Large animals were doomed to death. Some of the hardiest specimens tried to adapt to new conditions, but they also died. One of the last youngsters froze to death on Taimyr 11,450 years ago. The deer managed to adapt to the conditions of the polar tundra, where they still live. There is less food for humans. Rhinoceros bones are disappearing at the sites of Europe, and the number of bones of hare, arctic fox and other small animals is increasing. Mammoth carcasses in their entirety have been found more than once in the permafrost layer on p. Siberia. These carcasses were so well preserved that the dogs (and, according to Solzhenitsyn, the prisoners) ate mammoth meat with relish. In 1910, the remains of one of these mammoths were brought by the expedition of the Academy of Sciences. Thick layer of subcutaneous fat thick coat protected the mammoth from the polar cold. The mammoth's stomach was stuffed with the remains of sedge, caustic buttercup and other types of polar grasses and small shrubs. Of modern elephants, the mammoth is closest to the Indian. But the mammoth is more clumsy, its head is more massive, it has a steep hump above the front shoulder blades and huge tusks (incisors), often with spirally curved ends. The length of the tusk was sometimes more than 4 m, and the weight of a pair of tusks was approx. 300 kg. The body of the mammoth was completely covered with thick wool of black-brown or reddish-brown color, especially lush on the sides. A mane of thick, long red hair hung from her shoulders and chest. The skin taken from the animal took 30 m 2 . The weight of mammoth bones (without tusks) was 1500 kg. The weight of the mammoth itself reached 5 tons. Mammoths were excellently adapted to the conditions of the Arctic nature of that time. In flood meadows they found abundant food in the form of juicy green grass. According to scientists, one mammoth consumed up to 100 kg of plant food per day. In winter, mammoths could forage from under the snow, raking it with their tusks. Interestingly, the end of the mammoth's trunk was arranged differently from that of an elephant. It had two palm-shaped protrusions for capturing low polar grass. The life time of mammoths is now determined quite accurately according to C-14. In Berelekh on Indigirka, where a whole cemetery of mammoths was found, they died between 11830 ± 110 and 12240 ± 160 years ago. The oldest mammoths date back to ca. 50 thousand years ago.
A contemporary of the mammoth and his "eternal companion" was a hairy, or woolly, rhinoceros. On its muzzle grew a curved flat horn approx. 1 m. The second horn grew on the forehead.
There is still debate about what the third member of this community of fossil animals looked like. At first it was called the "cave lion". But this name is not accurate enough, since this huge cat combined in the structure of its body the signs of both a lion and a tiger. She possessed all the qualities of these predators, which made her a true scourge of all living things: the fury and strength of a lion, the dexterity, cunning and bloodthirstiness of a tiger. It was the true king of animals of that time, the lord of the extinct animal world of the ice age.
Along with mammoths and rhinos in the steppes and tundras, not only herds of s. deer, but also herds of wild horses and wild bulls. Together with them, in a bizarre mixture, animals of the deep Arctic and Central Asian deserts, mountainous regions and steppe spaces met: arctic fox and saiga antelope, Snow Leopard and red deer.
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