Abstract
The remains of “early” mammoths from a number of localities of the late Middle—early Late Pleistocene on the territory of the South of European Russia (the basin of the Don River, Rostov Region) are described. The description of the teeth and bones of a postcranial skeleton is given. Teeth characteristics (number of plates, lamellar frequency and enamel thickness) allow determining the finds as Mammuthus intermedius, described from the territory of France but known from other regions of Western Europe and Western Siberia as well. In Eastern Europe, this form was a typical representative of the Khazarian theriocomplex and existed during the MIS 5–7 interval. This mammoth taxon differs noticeably from the typical woolly mammoth M. primigenius, which appeared in continental Europe during MIS 4.
Highlights
Wear stage of teeth was determined by the number of worn plates [38]: the crown was not affected by wear—0, the crown was slightly worn—1, about less than half of the total number of plates was worn—2, half of the number of plates was worn—3, more than half of the plate was worn—4, all plates were affected by wear—5 and only part of the crown remained due to considerable wear—6
The teeth of the described mammoths from Southern Russia differ from the typical early Middle Pleistocene (Cromerian) M. trogontherii (Pohlig, 1885) from Süssenborn (Germany), Tiraspol (Transnistria) and the Kagal’nik sand pit by the smaller size of a crown, thinner enamel, higher lamellar frequency, shorter length of a single plate and a larger number of plates (Figures 9–11) [41,42]
Mammuthus intermedius was typical of the late Middle—early Late Pleistocene (MIS7–5)
Summary
Citation: Baigusheva, V.S.; Titov, V.V.Late Middle—Early Late PleistoceneMammoths from the Lower DonRiver Region (Russia). Quaternary2021, 4, 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/quat4010005Received: 25 November 2020Accepted: 25 January 2021Published: 3 February 2021Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
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