Mammoths and the Environment

Description

The study of fossilised remains of herbivorous animals, particularly those rare findings with well-preserved gastrointestinal tracts filled with plant remains, is crucial to our understanding of the environment in which they lived. Summarising thirty years of research, Ukraintseva presents evidence on plants once eaten by Siberia's major herbivorous mammals. The collection of pollen and plant spores from food remains sheds light on the vegetation of these ancient habitats, enabling researchers to reconstruct local floras of the time. This also promotes further insight into the causes of the extinction of various species due to changing environmental conditions and food availability. Providing a history of the research undertaken, the book also includes specific chapters on the Cherski horse and bison, along with the vegetation and climate of Siberia in the late Anthropogene period, making it a lasting reference tool for graduate students and researchers in the field.

Valentina V. Ukraintseva is Chief Investigator at the State Biosphere Reserve 'Taymyrskiy', Department of Research Investigations, Russia. She has published extensively on mammoths, is a member of the Mammoth Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is also president of the Palynological Section of the Russian Botanical Society.

'This book should be studied by every paleobotanist, paleoecologist, paleontologist, and archaeologist interested in arctic environments, climate change, extinctions, and early human adaptations to far northern latitudes. Ukraintseva's volume brings much of the paleoecological information available only in the Russian language to the English-speaking scientific community and this fact alone makes this a very valuable contribution. This volume is a very useful compilation of information regarding past environments of northern Siberia and the relationship to the ecology of the mammoth faunal complex. Valentina Ukraintseva should be congratulated on a job well done.' Steven R. Holen, Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research