Mammoth steppe
During glacial periods in the later Pleistocene it stretched east-to-west, from the Iberian Peninsula in the west of Europe, then across Eurasia and through Beringia (the region including the far northeast of Siberia, Alaska and the now submerged land between them) and into the Yukon in northwest Canada; from north-to-south, the steppe reached from the Arctic southward to southern Europe, Central Asia and northern China.
[10] Modern humans began to inhabit the biome following their expansion out of Africa, reaching the Siberian Arctic by around 45,000 years ago.
[11] At the end of the 19th century, Alfred Nehring (1890)[12] and Jan Czerski (Iwan Dementjewitsch Chersky, 1891)[13] proposed that during the last glacial period a major part of northern Europe had been populated by large herbivores and that a steppe climate had prevailed there.
[19] During the peak of the last glacial maximum, a vast mammoth steppe stretched from the Iberian Peninsula across Eurasia and over the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon where it was stopped by the Wisconsin glaciation.
[20] During glacial periods, there is clear evidence for intense aridity due to water being held in glaciers and their associated effects on climate.
[21][22][7] The mammoth steppe was like a huge 'inner court' that was surrounded on all sides by moisture-blocking features: massive continental glaciers, high mountains, and frozen seas.
[7] This is thought to have been caused by seven factors: These physical barriers to moisture flow created a vast arid basin spanning three continents.
[25] During Pleniglacial interstadials, alder, birch, and pine trees survived in northern Siberia, however during the Last Glacial Maximum only a treeless steppe vegetation existed.
[3][6][8] The herbaceous flora included graminoids such as wild rye, bluegrass, junegrass, fescue, and sedge, and also diverse forbs such as fringed sagebrush, campion, rock-jasmine, cinquefoil, goosefoot, buttercup, and plantain.
In what-is-today Siberia were the relatives of extant animals like the argali, snow sheep, Siberian roe deer, and the Mongolian gazelle.
Not long before the last glacial maximum (roughly 40,000 years ago), an extinct paleospecies of argali (Ovis argaloides) also lived in Europe.
While the cave hyena was a part of the mammoth steppe fauna in Europe, it did not range into the core high-latitude, northern Eurasian-Siberian reaches of the biome.
Bird remains are rare because of their fragile structure, but there is some evidence for the snowy owl, willow ptarmigan, gyrfalcon, common raven and great bustard.
At the beginning of the Holocene 10,000 years ago, mossy forests, tundra, lakes and wetlands displaced mammoth steppe.
A study of the frozen mummy of a steppe bison found in northern Yakutia indicated that it was a pasture grazer in a habitat that was becoming dominated by shrub and tundra vegetation.
Its highly productive grasslands were maintained by animals trampling any mosses and shrubs, and actively transpiring grasses and herbs dominated.
[43] Two other sites in the Maksunuokha River valley to the south of the Shirokostan Peninsula, northeast Siberia, dated between 14,900 and 13,600 years ago showed the remains of mammoth hunting and the production of micro-blades similar to those found in northwest North America, suggesting a cultural connection.
[46][1] Recent paleo-biome reconstruction[47][48][49] and pollen analysis[50][51][52] suggest that some present-day Altai-Sayan areas could be considered the closest analogue to the mammoth steppe environment.
