Immigration of glacial relicts into northern Europe

Abstract

On the basis of opinions held by leading Soviet geologists the author, in a paper of 1957, concluded that the immigration started from an ice‐dammed lake in the valley of R. Onega, emptying into the White Sea, from which the animals had been sluiced up in front of the advancing ice‐sheet. Recent geological work suggests that the Würm ice‐cap of northern Europe (and adjacent Arctic regions) extended in northern Russia as far eastwards as the Urals, creating a continuous network of ice‐dammed waters along the ice‐front. Consequently, the relicts may have come from considerably more eastern regions than the Onega Ice Lake. The presence of relicts in lakes of the Kola Peninsula is also discussed. It is shown that these once enigmatic relict localities can be explained in the light of recent geological research, which suggests that the White Sea basin experienced a freshwater phase during the Würm deglaciation, thus allowing the relicts, which do not tolerate higher salinities, to reach even the Kola Peninsula.