New data on the mammoth fauna in the Amga River basin

Abstract

Many unique finds of Pleistocene animals have been made on the territory of Yakutia, including whole frozen bodies. However, the majority of the finds come from the northern regions. On the territory of Central Yakutia, in contrast to Northern Yakutia, there are much fewer finds. This is due to the smaller number of preserved relict ice deposits of the Upper Pleistocene ("Yedoma") and the lack of systematic, licensed collection of mammoth ivory and other remains of the mammoth fauna due to their unsatisfactory preservation, which is caused by the stronger thawing of the permafrost in summer in Central Yakutia. There are relatively few published scientific papers on the mammoth fauna of the Amgar River basin. Therefore, new data from this area are of scientific interest. We have studied new material on the mammoth fauna from the "Mount Korolenko" locality, located on the left bank of the Amgar River near the village of the same name. The material was collected during school expeditions organised by the Amga Lyceum and the Russian Geographical Society in 2022-2023. It shows that at this site bone remains are washed out by the river on the right bank of the Amgas. Scattered bones were found on both the left and right banks, but the right bank is richer in palaeontological material. The bone remains are represented by fragments and whole bones of the postcranial skeleton of various animals. The age of most of the finds probably corresponds to the Karga interstadial. The taxonomic identification of the bones showed the presence of the following species: woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, Lena horse, steppe bison, reindeer, red deer. There is a fragment of the humerus of a roe deer, possibly of late Neopleistocene age. A morphometric study of the bone remains was carried out and comparisons made with literature data. The list of large mammals that lived in the Amgas basin in the late Neoproterozoic has been completed.