Last record of Trogontherium cuvieri (Mammalia, Rodentia) from the late Pleistocene of China

Abstract

The “giant” beaver, Trogontherium cuvieri Fischer, 1809, is an extinct species that was widely distributed all over Palaearctic Realm. And the well-approved temporal range of this species is from the Late Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene. Here we report a new specimen of T. cuvieri from the upper Pleistocene of the Songhua River drainage area near Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. It coexists with a typical north Eurasia Mammuthus-Coelodonta fauna, in which major elements including Mammuthus primigenius, Equus ferus, Procapra sp, Bison sp, Megaloceros sp., Marmota sp., Castor fiber, etc. The 14C dating on mammal bones from the same site yields an average age of ca. 40ka BP, falling in the range of the MIS-3a. The discovery of T. cuvieri indicates that this wide distributed species survived into the late Pleistocene in northeast China. During MIS-3a, the northeast China was rather warm and humid, and probably presented a favorable environment for T. cuvieri. The ultimate extinction of T. cuvieri, still need further research and more evidence, could be related more likely to hunting by the late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers than climate change.