Andreev, Andrei A.

Hubberten, Hans-Wolfgang

Kuznetsova, Tatiana V.

Schirrmeister, Lutz

Siegert, Christina

Sulerzhitsky, Leopold D.

OceanRep

 permafrost deposits in the Arctic region of Northern Siberia. - Quaternary International  89:97-118  Sher, A.V., 1986 - Olyorian Land Mammal Age of Northeastern Siberia. - Palaeontographia Italica 74:97-112  Yurtsev, 1981 - Relict steppe assemblages of north-eastern Asia. – Novosibirsk, Nauka, 168 p. (in Russian)   INFLUENCE OF LATE QUATERNARY PALEOENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALS IN THE LAPTEV SEA REGION  Tatiana V. KUZNETSOVA1, Leopold D. SULERZHITSKY2, Andrei ANDREEV3a, Christina SIEGERT3b, Lutz SCHIRRMEISTER3c, and H.-W. HUBBERTEN3d 1 Department of Paleontology, Faculty of Geology, Moscow State University, Vorob’evy Gory, Moscow, 119992, Russia; tatkuz@orc.ru 2 Geological Institute RAS, Moscow, 109017, Russia; 3 Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Research Unit Potsdam, Telegrafenberg A43, D-14473 Potsdam, Germany; 3a aandreev@awi-potsdam.de; 3b csiegert@awi-potsdam.de; 3c lschirrmeister@awi-potsdam.de; 3d hubbert@awi-potsdam.de  Understanding of the paleoenvironment is only possible through multidisciplinary studies of terrestrial deposits from the shelf land. Perennially frozen sediments along the Laptev Sea coast and New Siberian Islands contain various bioindicators of the past environment including mammal bones, fragments of insects, mollusk shells, remains of plant macrofossils, diatoms, pollen, ostracods etc. The study of these indicators, supplemented by 14C dating, provides excellent archives of past life and Pleistocene environmental conditions.  In the frame of the joint Russian-German “Lena Delta Expeditions” (1998-2002), carried out under the umbrella of the Russian-German cooperation “System Laptev Sea 2000”, we investigated Late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits on the Laptev Sea coast, southwest coast of the East Siberian Sea and New Siberian Islands. Our collection of large mammal bones contains more than 3000 samples. It is unique because all bone findings were collected and registered, in contrast to former collections. Such an approach combined with radiocarbon dating of bone collagen (more than 300 dates) makes it possible to bring out some important aspects of date distribution of large animals in the studied area during the Late Quaternary. It is the first time that we have had such complete and well-dated material from the Arctic region.  A large part of the collection consists of Mammuthus primigenius bones (nearly 38%) and mammoth dates in our database are predominant (about 200 dates). The distribution of the bone ages is heterogeneous, especially for the mammoths. All dates may be divided into three groups. The first group consists of dates from ca 50 ka BP to 35-34 ka BP with a maximal number of dates around 40-38 ka BP. The second group (33 ka BP - 23-22 ka BP) has two periods with maximum numbers of dates: 33-32 ka BP and 25-24 ka BP. The last large number of dates belongs to the period from 15 ka BP to 9 ka BP with a maximum number of dates around 11-10 ka BP.  58   The distribution of radiocarbon dates probably reflects periodic changes in the size of mammal populations that was determined by alterations of environmental conditions. Increases in mammoth fossil bone numbers and their subsequent decreases indicate favorable and less favorable environmental conditions for woolly mammoths during periods of amelioration and deterioration of climate, fluctuations in the population size and/or migrations of the mammoth herds (Schirrmeister et al., 2002). We have attempted to compare our “mammoth” periods with climatic periods by analysis of pollen remains.  The ca 50 ka BP - 35-34 ka BP period corresponds to the Middle Weichselian (Early Karginsky) Interstadial. It was the beginning of climatic warming, drainage of lakes and active development of ice complex formation on the Taymyr Peninsula (Siegert et al., 1999). Pollen data from the southern Taymyr indicate the presence of open Larix forest with Betula nana and Alnus fruticosa. Pollen-based climate reconstruction shows that it was a rather warm and wet period with temperatures 0.5-1.5°C warmer and precipitation 25-75 mm higher than today (Andreev et al., 2002b). On the contrary, pollen data from the Laptev Sea coast (Bykovsky Peninsula and Bol’shoy Lyakhovsky Island) indicate treeless vegetation and rather cold and dry climate (Andreev et al., 2002a).  The second “mammoth” period (33 ka BP - 23-22 ka BP) is correlated with the Late Karginsky interval reflected in pollen records from the northern Taymyr Peninsula and Laptev Sea coast (Andreev et al., 2002a, 2003). According to pollen spectra, open steppe-like herb communities dominated vegetation. Environmental conditions were rather severe (with temperatures 2-5°C colder and precipitation 50-100 mm lower than today).  The last “mammoth” period is from 15 ka BP to 9 ka BP with a maximum number of dates around 11-10 ka BP. The 11.5-10 ka BP interval is characterized by a rapid increase of warm and wet elements in pollen spectra. It can be interpreted as amelioration of climatic conditions (Andreev et al., 2002a, b, 2003). The reconstructed temperatures were 1.5° warmer and precipitation was ca. 25 mm higher than today. It is also a period with the largest number of woolly mammoth dates during the Late Pleistocene. This may indicate that it was a period with the most favorable environmental conditions for the mammoths.  The period of the most unfavorable environmental conditions was probably between 22 ka BP and 15 ka BP as only a few dates from woolly mammoth bones were obtained (Kuznetsova et al., 2001). It is interpreted as an extremely cold and dry period during the Late Pleistocene. The lack of mammoth dates for this period does not indicate the total absence of mammoths in the Laptev Sea region, but it reflects a relative decrease in their numbers.  Muskox and horse bone ages prove that these large grazing mammals lived during not only the Pleistocene and the Early Holocene, but also during the Late Holocene in the East Siberian Arctic. Three muskox dates between 3-2.7 ka BP from the Taymyr Peninsula (Sulerzhitsky and Romanenko, 1997) and two recently obtained dates (3200±40 and 3180±100 yr BP) from Bykovsky Peninsula reveal a wide muskox distribution in the Laptev Sea region during the Late Holocene. There are also two new horse Holocene dates: 4610±40 yr BP from the Bykovsky Peninsula and 2200±50 yr BP  59 from the Bol’shoy Lyakhovsky Island. This is in contrast to the previous opinion that wild horses had not lived during the Holocene in the Siberian Arctic.  We thank all German and Russian colleagues who took part in the Lena Delta Expedition under the Program "Laptev Sea System 2000" for their help, especially A. Sher and S. Kuz’mina. We are also thankful to the Russian-German Otto Schmidt Laboratory and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research for the partial support of this work (project 01-04-48930).  References  Andreev, A.A., Schirrmeister, L., Siegert, Ch., Bobrov, A.A., Demske, D., Seiffert, M., and Hubberten, H.-W., 2002a – Paleoenvironmental Changes in Northeastern Siberia during the Late Quaternary – evidence from pollen records of the Bykovsky Peninsula – Polarforschung 70:13-25  Andreev, A.A., Siegert, Ch., Klimanov, V.A., Derevyagin, A.Y., Shilova, G.N., and Meles, M., 2002b – Late Pleistocene and Holocene vegetation and climate on the Taymyr Lowland, Northern Siberia – Quaternary Research 57:138-150  Andreev, A.A., Tarasov, P.E., Siegert, Ch., Ebel, T., Klimanov, V.A., Meles, M., Bobrov, A.A., Derevyagin, A.Y., Lubinski, D.J., and Hubberten, H.-W., 2003 – Late Pleistocene and Holocene vegetation and climate on the northern Taymyr Peninsula, Arctic Russia – Boreas 32-3  Kuznetsova, T.V., Sulerzhitsky, L.D., and Siegert, Ch., 2001 - New data on the “Mammoth” fauna of the Laptev Shelf Land (Arctic Siberia) - First International Congress “The World of Elephants” – Abstracts - pp. 289–292  Schirrmeister, L., Siegert, Ch., Kuznetsova, T., Kuzmina, S., Andreev, A., Kienast, F., Meyer, H., and Bobrov, A., 2002 - Paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic records from permafrost deposits in the Arctic region of Northern Siberia - Quaternary International 89:97–118  Siegert, C., Derevyagin, A.Y., Shilova, G.N., Hermichen, W.-D., and Hiller, A., 1999 - Paleoclimatic indicators from permafrost sequences in the Eastern Taymyr Lowland – in: Kassens, H., Bauch, H.A., Dmitrenko, I., Eicken, H., Hubberten, H.-W., Meles., M., Thiede, J. and Timokhov, L. (eds.) – Land - Ocean systems in the Siberian Arctic: dynamics and history – pp. 477-499 – Springer-Verlag, Berlin  Sulerzhitsky, L.D. and Romanenko, F.A., 1997 - Age and distribution of the “Mammoth” fauna of the Polar Region of Asia - Earth Cryosphere 1-4:12-19 (in Russian)    60 

Influence of Late Quaternary paleoenvironmental conditions on the distribution of mammals fauna in the Laptev Sea region

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