Taphonomic phenomenon of ancient hair from Glacial Beringia:perspectives for palaeoecological reconstructions

An accumulation of mammoth hair, discovered in the Bol'shaya Chukochya River valley (northeast Yakutia, Russia), was found to contain remains of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, including plants, insects, crustaceans, birds and mammals. Radiocarbon dating indicated that this post-mortem tapho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Boreas
Main Authors: Kirillova, Irina V., Van der Plicht, Johannes, Gubin, Stanislav V., Zanina, Oksana G., Chernova, Olga F., Lapteva, Elena G., Trofimova, Svetlana S., Zinovyev, Eugeny V., Zharov, Anton A., Fadeeva, Elena O., Van Kolfschoten, Thijs, Shidlovskiy, Fedor K., Kotov, Alexey A.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
MANDIBULAR MORPHOLOGY
FUNCTIONAL-MORPHOLOGY
KOLYMA RIVER
FRESH-WATER
COPEPODS
PERMAFROST
DEPOSITS
FOSSIL
BRANCHIOPODA
CRUSTACEANS
Arctic
Kolyma
Ice
kolyma river
permafrost
Thermokarst
Yakutia
Beringia
Copepods
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/11370/fef46c74-e636-4c3e-bc8c-2ff104953145
https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/fef46c74-e636-4c3e-bc8c-2ff104953145
https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12162
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/79507333/Taphonomic_phenomenon_of_ancient_hair_from_Glacial_Beringia.pdf
Description
Summary:An accumulation of mammoth hair, discovered in the Bol'shaya Chukochya River valley (northeast Yakutia, Russia), was found to contain remains of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, including plants, insects, crustaceans, birds and mammals. Radiocarbon dating indicated that this post-mortem taphocoenosis represented multiple time periods. The mammoth hair was dated to older than 45 ka BP, the plants were dated to 12 750 +/- 50 a BP (which corresponds to a shift in the environmental conditions and landscapes during the formation of thermokarst in northeastern Russia) and the bird feathers were dated to 4115 +/- 40 a BP. A scenario of the formation of this fossil assemblage is proposed, covering the MIS 3-1 time range. The hair also yielded various Arctic branchiopod crustaceans, which inhabit shallow temporary water bodies and therefore are important for reconstruction of palaeoenvironments. The cladoceran subgenus Daphnia (Ctenodaphnia), currently absent from the Asian part of Beringia, is reported from this region for the first time. The study demonstrates that the discovered permafrostpreserved hair is a unique repository of Ice Age organisms.

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