Mammoth fauna time of existence. Mammoth fauna, its origin, habitat conditions and species composition. Woolly rhinos lived happily before the Neanderthals

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mammoth fauna dnipropetrovsk, mammoth fauna pet supplies
, or mammoth faunistic complex- faunistic complex of mammals that lived in the late (upper) Pleistocene (70-10 thousand years ago) in the extratropical zone of Eurasia and North America in special biocenoses - tundra-steppes that existed all the time of glaciation and moved in accordance with changes in the boundaries of the glacier to the north or to south.

1 Occurrence
2 Typical representatives of the fauna
Extinction hypotheses
- 3.1 Climatic
- 3.2 Anthropological
4 Representatives of the mammoth fauna at present
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Literature
8 References

Emergence

The tundra steppe arose in the preglacial (periglacial) belt of the last glacial epoch (the last glaciation) in special landscape and climatic conditions: a sharply continental climate with a low level of average temperatures in dry air and significant watering of the territory in summer due to glacial melt waters, with the appearance in the lowlands of lakes and swamps. The flora of the tundra steppe included various herbaceous plants (especially cereals and sedges), mosses, as well as small trees and shrubs that grew mainly in river valleys and along lake shores: willow, birch, alder, pine and larch. At the same time, the total biomass of vegetation in the tundra steppe was, apparently, very high, mainly due to grasses, which made it possible to settle in vast areas of the preglacial belt of abundant and peculiar fauna.

Typical representatives of the fauna

The largest representative of the mammoth fauna (after which it was named) was the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blum.) - a northern elephant that lived 50-10 thousand years ago in vast areas of Europe, Asia and North America. It was covered with thick and very long red hair with hair length up to 70 - 80 cm. The bones of these animals are found in almost all localities of Siberia.

Tundra steppe of the last glacial epoch:
(left to right) wild horses, mammoths, cave lions over the carcass of a reindeer, woolly rhinoceros

In addition to the mammoth, this fauna also included ancient horses (2 or 3 species), woolly rhinoceros, bison, tur, musk ox, yak, steppe bison, giant big-horned deer, red deer and reindeer, camel, saiga antelope, gazelle, elk, kulan , cave bear, cave lion, cave hyena, giant hippopotamus, wolf, wolverine, arctic fox, marmots, ground squirrels, lemmings, hares, etc. The composition of the mammoth fauna indicates that it descended from the hipparion fauna, being its northern periglacial variant. All animals of the mammoth fauna are characterized by adaptations to life in low temperatures, in particular, long and thick wool. Many species of animals increased in size, their large body weight and thick subcutaneous fat helped them to better endure the harsh climate.

Extinction hypotheses

A significant part of the representatives of this fauna became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene - the beginning of the Holocene (10-15 thousand years ago). There are two hypotheses to explain this extinction.

Climatic

According to this hypothesis, animals of the mammoth fauna became extinct, unable to adapt to new natural and climatic conditions. Climate warming and the melting of glaciers dramatically changed the natural situation in the former zone of the periglacial tundra steppe: the air humidity and precipitation increased significantly, as a result, swampiness developed over large areas, and the height of the snow cover increased in winter. Animals of the mammoth fauna, well protected from dry cold and able to get their food on the vast tundra steppe during the winters of the Ice Age with little snow, found themselves in an extremely unfavorable ecological situation for them. The abundance of snow in winter made it impossible to get enough food. In summer, high humidity and waterlogging of the soil, extremely unfavorable in themselves, were accompanied by a colossal increase in the number of blood-sucking insects (gnat, so abundant in the modern tundra), the bites of which exhausted the animals, preventing them from feeding calmly, as is the case now with the northern deer.

Thus, the mammoth fauna found itself in a very short time (the glaciers were melting very quickly) in the face of abrupt changes in the habitat to which most of its species could not adapt so quickly, and the mammoth fauna as a whole ceased to exist. However, this hypothesis does not at all explain the fact that until the last Holocene warming 10-12 thousand years ago, the mammoth “glacial” biocenosis successfully withstood several dozen warming and cooling periods. At the same time, repeated climate changes were not accompanied by the extinction of the mammoth fauna; As the analysis of the finds of the bones of fossil animals shows, in the warm periods the mammoth fauna was even more numerous than in the cold "ice" periods.

Anthropological

A number of researchers believe that the main reason for the collapse of the mammoth fauna is the "Paleolithic revolution", which allowed primitive hunters to explore the circumpolar regions of Eurasia and North America. In these areas (in contrast to Africa and tropical Asia), man appeared quite late, having already mastered the perfect methods of hunting large animals. As a result, the megafauna of the mammoth steppes, which had no time to adapt, disappeared, exterminated by people. At the same time, the destruction of key “landscape-forming” species (primarily mammoths) by primitive hunters meant a break in ecological chains and a sharp drop in bioproductivity, which led to further extinction.

Representatives of the mammoth fauna at present

Some animals live in Eurasia and North America now, but in other natural and climatic zones. Now these species do not form such communities together. Of the large mammals of the mammoth fauna, reindeer have survived to this day, which are highly mobile and capable of long-distance migrations: in the summer to the tundra to the sea, where there are fewer midges, and in the winter to reindeer pastures in the forest-tundra and taiga; until recently, the wild horse was found in the steppe and forest-steppe zones. musk oxen have survived in relatively little snowy habitats in northern Greenland and on some islands of the North American archipelago. Saigas and camels migrated south to dry steppes, semi-deserts and deserts. Yaks climbed into the snowy highlands and now live only in a very limited area. Elks, wolves and wolverines have perfectly adapted to life in the forest zone. Some small mammoth animals, such as lemmings and arctic foxes, have also adapted to the new conditions.

According to some data, in the Holocene 4-7 thousand years ago, a population of crushed mammoths was still preserved on Wrangel Island.

Notes (edit)

Why are mammoths extinct?
Greatness and reconstruction of nature
Mass extinction of large animals at the end of the Pleistocene
Blitzkrieg. Large animals and people
Vereshchagin N.K.Why the mammoths died out. - M., 1979.

Literature

Fundamentals of paleontology. Volume 13. Mammals (Handbook for paleontologists and geologists of the USSR) / ed. V.I. Gromova, Ch. ed. Yu.A. Orlov. - M .: State Scientific and Technical Publishing House of Literature on Geology and Subsoil Protection, 1962. - 422 p.
Eskov K. Yu. History of the Earth and Life on It. - M .: MIROS - MAIK Nauka / Interperiodika, 2000 .-- 352 p.
Iordansky N. N. Evolution of life. - M .: Academy, 2001 .-- 426 p.
Shumilov Yu. Old and new in mammoth fate // Science and life, 2004, no. 7.
Vereshchagin NK On the protection of paleozoological monuments of the Quaternary period // Wildlife protection, 2001, No. 2. - p. 16-19. Full text
Mammoth fauna of the Russian plain and eastern Siberia / ed. A. N. Svetovidova (Proceedings of the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Volume 72). - L .: ZIN AN SSSR, 1977 .-- 114 p. - ISSN 0206-0477

Mammoth Fauna Information About

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Age of Mammoths

In the Upper Pleistocene in Northern Eurasia, a complex of mammalian fauna was formed, called the mammoth fauna, or mammoth complex. It is the mammoth that is one of the main elements of this animal community, which also included musk oxen, woolly rhinos, bison, reindeer, saigas, polar foxes, wolves, etc.

The fauna of large mammals, which lived 70-10 thousand in Siberia, was very diverse. The mammoth was its main component, since the bones of these elephants are found in almost all localities of Siberia. Because of this, it received the name "mammoth fauna" of the late Pleistocene (the Pleistocene is a geological period that began 1.85 million years ago and ended 10 thousand years ago). In addition to the mammoth, it includes 19 more species (below are some of them in the order of their frequency of occurrence in Siberia): ancient horse (2 or 3 species), ancient bison, reindeer, giant deer, red deer, saiga antelope, woolly rhinoceros, elk, cave bear, cave lion. Some of these animals became extinct, but most of them live in Eurasia now, but not at all where they used to be, in other climatic zones, and these species now do not form communities together, as before. Reindeer lives in the tundra and taiga, and the horse is found (it used to be met, there are no wild horses now) in the steppe and forest-steppe zones. This change in animal habitats clearly shows us what huge changes have occurred in the world over the past thousand years.

Woolly rhino and megafauna

During the Ice Age, very unusual species of animals lived in Siberia. Many of them are no longer on Earth. The largest of them was the mammoth. Paleontologists combine all animals that lived simultaneously with the mammoth into a mammoth faunistic complex (“mammoth fauna”).

A significant part of these animals died out at the end of the Pleistocene - the beginning of the Holocene (about 10 thousand years ago), unable to get used to the new natural and climatic conditions. Among the large extinct species, mammoth fauna include: mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, big-horned deer, primitive bison, primitive horse, cave lion, cave bear, cave hyena, primitive tour.

But many representatives of the animal world of the mammoth era were able to adapt to climate warming and changes in the habitat in the Holocene. They survived, and they still live on Earth. For this, some had to move to more northern regions. For example, reindeer, arctic foxes and lemings are now found only in the tundra. Others, such as saigas and camels, moved south into dry steppes. Yaks and musk oxen climbed into the snowy highlands and now live only in a very limited area. Elks, wolves and wolverines have perfectly adapted to life in the forest zone.

All these animals are very different, they differ in size, appearance, lifestyle. They belong to different species groups. But they have one significant similarity - their adaptability to life in the harsh climate of the Ice Age. At this time, most of them acquired a warm fur coat - a reliable protection from frost and wind. Many species of animals have increased in size. Their large body mass and thick subcutaneous fat helped them to cope with the harsh climate more easily.

Hundreds of thousands of years is a huge period, during this time a wide variety of changes took place in nature, the glacier advanced and retreated, followed by natural zones. The territories of animal settlement were shrinking and expanding. The animals themselves changed, some species disappeared and others came to replace them. Scientists believe that even during short periods of warming, the size of many species decreased, and during cold snaps, they increased. Large animals tolerate cold more easily, but they need more food. And during the last warming in the Holocene epoch, forests replaced the tundra and steppes, shrub and herbaceous vegetation decreased, the food supply of herbivores greatly decreased. Therefore, the largest animals of the mammoth complex became extinct.

Woolly rhinos lived happily before the Neanderthals

The ancestors of woolly rhinos arose about 2 million years ago in the region of the northern foothills of the Himalayas. For hundreds of thousands of years, they lived in Central China and east of Lake Baikal.

Much later, woolly rhinos arrived from Asia to central Europe. Some of the fossil remains found in Germany are about 460 thousand years old, so woolly rhinos lived here long before the appearance of Neanderthals in Europe. This was proved by the employees of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, who managed to put together 50 pieces of the skull of the woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta tologoijensis.

Woolly rhinos kept their heads close to the ground while feeding and with their powerful teeth vaguely resembled a modern working lawnmower. Woolly rhinos weighed about 1.7 tons, had long fur and a warm undercoat. On his head, near his nose, he had two horns, one large, the other smaller. The size of a large one could exceed 1 m in length.

The contemporaries of the found woolly rhinoceros have adapted to the living conditions near the glacier. While other beasts fled from northern Europe to warmer southern regions, woolly mammoth-like giants grazed on the frozen, treeless plains with pleasure. This is what Germany looked like half a million years ago.

The European woolly rhinos also lived before, the remains of which were found in the dinners of the ancient Neanderthals. It is reliably known that hominids hunted these animals 70 thousand years ago, and 30 thousand years ago, ancient people captured two-horns on rock paintings in southern France. Although scientists call the anthropogenic factor one of the reasons for the extinction of woolly rhinos, however, climate change and the onset of heat about 8 thousand years ago led to the fact that they could not adapt to the rapidly changing environment and vegetation in particular, as a result of which they became extinct.

Berezovsky mammoth. Reconstruction of a mammoth found in 1926 in Siberia. Zoo museum. Petersburg.

MAMMOTE FAUNA -mammoth, musk ox, cave bear, deer, woolly rhinoceros and other animals that lived during the late glaciation (Pleistocene). When the mammoths died out, on y. a manufacturing economy appeared. For example, monuments with the earliest elements of a production economy such as Zarzi B date back to 12000 + 400, Hotu - from 11860 + 80 to 9190 ± 590, Belt - 11489 ± 550, Jarmo - 11240 + 300, etc. Mammoths: Kunda (tusks) - 9780 + 260, Berelekh (fabric) - 10370 + 90, Kostenki (bone) - 11000 + 200, Yudinovka (bone) - 13650 + 200, 138300 + 850, Eliseevich (bone) -14470 + 180, 15600 + 200 thousand years ago. Apparently, the reasons 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 glacier in Europe, huge herds of animals grazed - with. deer, bison, horses (the Irish deer had antlers up to 4m wide). Gone are the glaciers, the grass has become smaller. Mammoths and other large herbivores left for grass on the village. They climbed to Taimyr, Chukotka, but everywhere instead of the fertile steppes and forest-steppes of the glacier they were met by the waters of the Arctic Ocean ... Large animals were doomed to perish. Some of the most hardy specimens tried to adapt to new conditions, but they too died. One of the last youngsters froze to death on Taimyr 11,450 years ago. The reindeer managed to adapt to the conditions of the polar tundra, where they still live. There is less food for humans. At the European sites, rhino bones are disappearing and the number of bones of hares, arctic fox and other small animals is increasing. Carcasses of mammoths as a whole have been found more than once in the permafrost layer on the village. Siberia. These carcasses were so well preserved that the dogs (and, according to Solzhenitsyn, the prisoners) ate the mammoth meat with pleasure. In 1910, the remains of one of these mammoths were brought by an expedition of the Academy of Sciences. A thick layer of subcutaneous fat and thick wool protected the mammoth from the polar cold. The mammoth's stomach was filled with the remains of sedge, caustic buttercup, and other species of polar grasses and small shrubs. Of the 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 bent 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 mammoth's body was completely covered with thick black-brown or reddish-brown hair, especially lush on the sides. A mane of thick, long red hair hung from his shoulders and chest. The skin removed 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. The mammoths were perfectly adapted to the conditions of the Arctic nature of that time. On flooded meadows, they found abundant food in the form of lush green grass. According to scientists, one mammoth consumed up to 100 kg of plant food per day. In winter, mammoths could get food from under the snow, raking it with tusks. Interestingly, the end of the mammoth's trunk was not designed like that of an elephant. It had two palmar-like protrusions for grasping the 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 perished between 11830 ± 110 and 12240 ± 160 years ago. The oldest mammoths date back to ca. 50 thousand years ago.

The mammoth's contemporary and "eternal companion" was a hairy, or woolly, rhinoceros. A curved flat horn, approx. 1 m. The second horn grew on the forehead.

There is still controversy about what the third member of this fossil animal community looked like. At first it was called the "cave lion". But this name is not accurate enough, since this huge cat combined the signs of both a lion and a tiger in the structure of its body. 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. He was the true king of beasts of that time, the lord of the disappeared animal world of the Ice Age.

Along with mammoths and rhinos in the steppes and tundra, not only herds of the village were peacefully grazing. deer, but also herds of wild horses and wild bulls. Together with them, animals of the deep Arctic and Central Asian deserts, mountain regions and steppe areas met in a bizarre mixture: arctic fox and saiga antelope, snow leopard and red deer.

Life is a continuous process of development, in which periods of prosperity and decline alternate. The Cenozoic era, which began about 65 million years ago, is rich in events: tectonic movements intensify, the relief, flora and fauna change, and climatic transformations take place.
Glaciation, which began about 1 million years ago in the Quaternary period (anthropogen), did not capture the Southern Urals, but the cold breath of the icy desert here also affected the climate, flora and fauna. Under these conditions, some species die out without experiencing temperature changes, while others give new forms that are more adapted to the changed conditions of existence.

The showcase "Pleistocene Fauna", which contains authentic exhibits, tells about the ancient animals of the Ice Age in the Chelyabinsk Regional Museum of Local Lore.

... Before you is a conventional river bank, which was washed away by water, perhaps over several millennia. Evidence of bygone eras has been laid bare: burials of bones, extinct vertebrates. What are these animals?

A unique exhibit of our museum is an authentic skeleton of a cave bear. It is a giant animal, weighing about 800-900 kg, three times larger than a modern brown bear. Thick fur helped him survive in harsh winters. Despite its threatening appearance, the bear was quite peaceful. It cannot even be called a real predator, because the diet of this giant consisted mainly of plant foods, significantly distinguishing it from omnivorous descendants. These animals lived in groups. It is possible that competition with humans for habitats has led to the extinction of this amazing animal.

The cave fauna of the region is presented in the exposition by another curious exhibit - the cave hyena. The showcase contains the skull of this animal. Pay attention to the reconstruction drawing of the Ice Age hyena. Compared to a bear, this is not a large animal.

The primitive bison is often called aurochs or bison. Its appearance conveys the drawing well. The bison was massive, its horns set wide apart. This feature is clearly visible on the skull. Far protruding eye sockets indicate the presence of a thick coat. A huge skull of a bison-bison was found on the territory of the Uvelsky district. Here, next to it, is a huge skull and bones of a primitive bull-bull, found during the extraction of sand on the left bank of the Uvelka River near the village of Kichigino. The rounds differed from the bison in a more graceful build, a high head, and a different shape of horns. The listed features are clearly visible in the animal reconstruction drawing. Tours have disappeared, by historical standards, quite recently.

The general interest in the exposition is a volumetric scientific reconstruction of a woolly rhinoceros, made on the basis of drawings of an ancient man and animal skeletons found in permafrost. Genuine exhibits are presented in the showcase with a skull with a lower jaw, tibia, fibula, humerus and ulna, they were found in the vicinity of the city of Korkino.

Rhinos were large mammals, weighing three tons, reaching a height of over one and a half meters and a length of about four meters. The rhinoceros had two, in contrast to living animals, flat horns, the largest of which reached a meter in length. Horns served the woolly rhinoceros not only as an instrument of protection from predators, but also as a tool for "plowing" snow and getting food in winter. Woolly rhinos were aggressive animals, but due to their size and strength they had almost no enemies. Only the cubs who strayed from their mother could become prey for wolves and hyenas. The life span of rhinos was 50-60 years. The remains of a woolly rhinoceros are found on the territory of almost all of Russia. On the territory of the Chelyabinsk region, more than 30 habitats of the woolly rhinoceros are known, mainly karst grottoes and caves.

Remains of mammoths are numerous in the exposition. The showcase shows a femur found on the banks of the Sintashta river in the Bredinsky region, a lower jaw found in Chelyabinsk and other bones of this inhabitant of the glacier.

Mammoths reached four meters in height and weighed up to six tons. The large head ended in a long trunk, on the sides of which three-meter tusks protruded. Mammoths had a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and were covered with thick long hair. Wool and fat are excellent natural heat insulators that save the animal's body from the cold. The stories about the mammoth hunting, passed from mouth to mouth, have come down to us in the form of a fairy tale about Ivan the peasant's son and the miracle-yuda. Remember: "a huge, fanged and proboscis miracle sits under a" viburnum bridge "-floor on a pit-trap" ... With a few precise strokes the ancient man depicted a mammoth: a humped back, long hair, bent tusks with which this "bulldozer" shoveled the snow, looking for food or breaking ice from cracks in the ground. Ice was needed instead of water - a huge glacier took all the moisture, and it was very dry in the frozen steppes. With folded teeth-millstones, the giants rubbed branches, twigs, foliage.
Scientists believe that mammoths were ideally adapted to living in the Arctic climate and should have dominated the animal kingdom for no less time than dinosaurs. However, nature decreed otherwise: mammoths existed as a species for only about six hundred thousand years and died out as mysteriously and unexpectedly as reptiles. The last mammoths became extinct about three thousand years ago on about. Wrangel in the Chukchi Sea. This disappearance is one of the most intriguing mysteries of science: why did animals that survived more than one cold snap and warming suddenly become extinct only after the beginning of the last warming? As well as other representatives of the mammoth fauna.

There is also a so-called "hunting" hypothesis, according to which millions of "kind and affectionate, clinging to man" mammoths did not die out, but were destroyed by this very man in order to feed and get skins. The extinction of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, primitive bull, wild horse and a number of other species was certainly accelerated by man. Hunting for them was the main source of human existence in all Paleolithic eras. Man hunted mammoths, cave bears and other animals, the bones of which are found in abundance in the cultural layers of the sites. But this is also only a hypothesis. The extinction of ice age animals is a puzzle with many unknowns.

But in addition to the extinct, the territory of the Southern Urals was inhabited by species that successfully survived the change of eras, and today live in the territory of Eurasia. Mainly small mammals, or those of the large ones, which endured the hardships of life and escaped the destructive activities of man, have survived to this day. Over the past ten thousand years, climatic conditions have been close to modern ones. Vegetation and fauna almost completely acquires the appearance that we see now. The Holocene fauna appears to be significantly depleted in comparison with the Pleistocene fauna. Nowadays, animals such as bears, red deer, and in some places wolves, foxes and some other animals are becoming rare. Hunting, farming and other human economic activities have pushed many mammals into inaccessible wilderness, wilderness, swamps.

These are the main features of the history of the mammalian fauna during the Quaternary period. It is too early to say that it is well studied and we already know everything. Until now, some paleogeographic reconstructions are assessed by specialists ambiguously.

Svetlana Rechkalova,
head of the department of nature
Chelyabinsk Regional Museum of Local Lore

Mammoth fauna, mammoth faunistic complex , a complex of species of mammals that lived on the terr. Europe (excluding the Apennine, Balkan and Iberian Peninsula) and North. Asia in the late Pleistocene (130-10 thousand years ago). A characteristic feature of M. f. there was a coexistence in most of its range of species, to-rye now live in different natural zones: red deer, lemmings, arctic fox, saiga, sowing. deer, steppe pika, marmot. Typical types, to-rye were a part of M. f. almost throughout the territory. its distribution and throughout its existence were: primitive bison, wolf, arctic fox, Don hare, cave lion, wild horse (see Horse), mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, steppe pika, narrow-headed vole, wolverine, sowing. deer. In addition to these numerous. species in the structure of M. f. different regions included, etc., few. and rare: for example, marten, elk, brown bear and cave bear, giant deer, various species of small mustelids, rodents and insectivores. The composition of the main. species M. f. also changed over time. Allocate 2 hl. chronological MF variants: interglacial (130-100 thousand years ago) and glacial (100-10 thousand years ago). During the interglacial period, numerous. types of M. f. almost throughout the territory. its distribution was: red deer, beaver, forest voles, elk, various types of mice; in Europe and, possibly, in the Urals - a forest elephant. The mammoth was represented by an early evolutionary form. During the Ice Age, the ranges of these species were greatly reduced; species composition of M. f. markedly differed on different territories. The composition of the Naib. numerous. species identified 3 main. geogr. variants of M. f .: periglacial (north.), tund-ro-forest-steppe and steppe. The composition of the sowing. options other than the above. species included musk ox and ungulate lemmings and sib; tundra-forest-steppe - red deer, great ground squirrel, cave hyena, fox, saiga, steppe marmot, steppe polecat, several. species of voles (water, forest, common, dark, root vole), common. and yellow pied, gray hamster and Eversmann's hamster, ungulate and sib. lemmings. The steppe variant included: most of the species of the tundra-forest-steppe variant (with the exception of forest voles and lemmings), bactrian camel, Pleistocene donkey, corsac, jerboas. Depending on climate fluctuations in the current. During the ice age, there were also changes in the composition of M. f. Allocate M. f. relatively warm periods (interstadials), in which the share of forest species increased (red deer, beaver, brown bear, forest voles, elk, etc.), and M. t. cold periods (glacials), where the proportion of these species sharply decreased. On the territory. People region remnants of M. f. found in more than 50 localities of alluvial and lacustrine-alluvial types, in more than 50 localities in karst grottoes and caves. In some of them the remains of M. t. adjacent to the tools of ancient man: for example, at the sites of Bogdanovka and Troitskaya I; in the caves Ignatievskaya, Smelovskaya 2, Sikiyaz-Tamak 7 (see Sikiyaz-Tamak cave complex); grotto Ustinovo and Zotinsky grotto. As a result of the study of these remains on the territory. People region selected several. region. complexes of M. f., chronologically replacing each other. In most of the territory. in the region they belong to the tundra-forest-steppe variant, and only in the south are the steppe complexes of the M. f.; no complexes related to the interglacial have been found. The most ancient of the known is Aratsky (named after the village of Aratsky in Katav-Ivanov district), which existed 30-100 thousand years ago and can be attributed to one of the relatively warm periods (interstadials). Its species composition included forest and yellow-throated mice, wild ram (mouflon), giant deer, cave hyena, cave bear. The complex is presented in Idrisovskaya, Ust-Katavskaya and lower. layers of the Ignatievskaya and Sikiyaz-Tamak caves 7. The trace, the complex - Ignatievskiy (along the Ignatievskaya cave) - existed 25 ... 30-10 thousand years ago and coincides with the last cold period and the late Ice Age. It does not include the species characteristic of the Arat complex, but there are all typical representatives of the M. f. This complex is presented at the top. layers of the Ignatievskaya, Serpievskaya-1 and Serpievskaya-2 caves; in the grottoes Prigim 2, Ustinovo, Zotinsky. Steppe variant M. f. found in the bottom. layers of the Smelovskaya 2 cave; he is a geogr. a variation of the Arat complex. Its species composition includes the Pleistocene donkey. The disintegration of M. f. and its transformation into modern. the Holocene fauna occurred very quickly - in 2-3 thousand years. They were caused by sharp fluctuations in climate at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene (12-9 thousand years ago). At the same time, several became extinct. species (giant deer, mammoth, cave hyena, cave lion, Pleistocene donkey, woolly rhinoceros), the rest reduced their ranges or became part of the Holocene fauna. area.