The Middle Paleolithic Occupations of Mutzig-Rain (Alsace, France)

The Paleolithic site of Mutzig, discovered by chance in 1992 (Sainty 1992), has been the focus of several excavations since 2009. Located in Alsace (Bas-Rhin, France), it is presently one of only a handful of sites reliably attributed to the Middle Paleolithic in this area, thus providing rare evidence for a zone still relatively unknown for Early Prehistoric remains. The excellent preservation of the remains and the long stratigraphic sequence, with 6 to 8 in situ archaeological levels, make Mutzig a potential reference site for environmental and behavioral analyses for the Middle Paleolithic of the region. At least four archaeological levels contain burnt elements, and one level features a hearth structure. Taken together, the archaeological material, which is abundant in each of the different layers, forms an assemblage of more than 3000 faunal remains and more than 1500 lithic artifacts. Analyses of this site provide valuable insights into the environment and Neandertal ways of life in Alsace. We provide here only general results, with more detailed descriptions of the lithic and faunal remains presented in Diemer (this volume) and Sévêque (this volume). The faunal remains recovered from the human occupations in Levels 5 and 7 reflect the same relatively cold steppe-like environmental context and include reindeer, woolly mammoth, steppe horse, steppe bison and woolly rhinoceros. Small vertebrates also indicate a cold climate, though not related to the Pleniglacial. Confirmed isotopic data, from oxygen and carbon isotope measurements of horse and mammoth teeth, indicate temperatures lower than those of today and an open environment. Levels 9 and 10, however, tend to reveal a more temperate climate. The available OSL and ESR/U-series dates place the Mutzig occupations within the Early Weichselian Glacial (MIS 5, ca. 90,000 BP), an attribution which biometric analyses and the large and small fauna record tend to corroborate (Koehler et al. 2016a).

Mercury in Hair of Mammoth and Other Prehistorical Mammals as a Proxy of Hg Level in the Environment Associated with Climate Changes

The paper presents the first results of Hg determination in the hair of prehistorical animals (woolly mammoth, steppe bison, and woolly rhino). Hair of prehistorical mammals can be used as an archive that preserves changes of environmental pollution at the paleoscale. The aim of our study was to assess the levels of Hg exposure of ancient animals and to understand whether Hg concentration in hair could be used as a proxy indicating changes of mercury levels in the environment following global climate changes. We assessed changes of Hg exposure recorded in hairs of seven specimens of mammoth fauna mammals that inhabited the Yakutia region in the period from 45 to 10 ka yr BP. Hg concentrations in hair varied from 0.017 to 0.177 µg/g; the lowest Hg concentration were determined in older specimens (45–33 kyr yr BP). The two highest concentrations belonged sample from the Last Glacial Maximum and the Karginian interstadial (57–24 kyr BP) periods. Our hypothesis is the increase of Hg concentrations in hair reflecting environmental Hg level might be forced by high dust load in cold periods and thawing permafrost in warm climatic periods. Long-term variations of Hg level recovered from Ice Age animals’ hair correlate with Hg profiles of concentration and deposition reconstructed from the Antarctica ice core.

A Middle Pleistocene steppe bison find within the Dürnstein Castle (Wachau, Lower Austria)

In the course of foundation works in the Dürnstein Castle cervical and front leg bones of a large Bison priscus bull were discovered in fluvial sediments. The small city of Dürnstein with its medieval centre is part of the UNESCO Wachau Cultural Landscape and is built mainly on Palaeozoic basement rocks. The find location is completely overbuilt, but remnants of fluvial sediments on the bones together with the altitude of the site approximately 17 m above the Danube point to a Middle Pleistocene fluvial aggradation level not younger than ca. 240,000 years, and the maximum age is 400,000 years. The fossil bearing location is interpreted as a small sandy bay of the Pleistocene Danube, protected from later degradation and erosion. Morphometric comparisons and taphonomic analyses of the bones allow the reconstruction of a scenario in which the bison probably had drowned in a flood and its carcass was buried quickly before destruction by scavengers or erosion. The study includes a comparison with bison specimens of an unpublished small megafaunal assemblage from adjacent Krems-Kreuzbergstraße. Processing marks on parts of these bones point to an anthropogenic Middle Palaeolithic influence and translocation. In addition, a tentative chronological sketch of the regional Bison species succession (B. menneri, B. schoetensacki, B. priscus) from the Early to the Late Pleistocene is presented.

Archeozoological Characteristics of the Shchapova 2 Paleolithic Site in Irkutsk

The paper presents the detailed results of the archaeozoological study of the large mammals from the Shchapova 2 Upper Paleolithic site located in Irkutsk. Excavations in 2019 revealed four conditionally defined horizons with archaeological and faunal material; within the studied area subaerial sediments of deluvial origin were uncovered. Layers 3 and 4 were attributed to the Karginian period (MIS 3), layer 2 to the Early Sartanian period (MIS 2), layer 1 to the Holocene (MIS 1). The largest number of bone remains was obtained from layer 4. Altogether we recognized ten taxa: Spermophilus sp., Panthera spelaea, Mammuthus primigenius, Equus sp., Coelodonta antiquitatis, Cervus elaphus, Megaloceros giganteus, Alces alces, Rangifer tarandus, Bison priscus. The species composition of Shchapova 2 site is characteristic of the Late Pleistocene of region with a predominance of horse and steppe bison, diversity of cervids and presence of woolly mammoth and rhinoceros. Most of the bones have only slightly weathered surfaces. It indicates that the bulk of the bone remains were only exposed for a short time on the surface or in the soil prior to deeper burial. The analysis of the faunal material suggests that the accumulation of bones from layers 3 and 4 took place in the hunter camp. The subsistence strategy was based primarily on two game animals: horse and steppe bison. Horses and steppe bison were killed in the immediate vicinity of the site. Sometimes red deer and moose were hunted from remote areas. Large parts of horse and steppe bison carcasses were transported from a kill and initial butchering site to a residential and consumption site. Most likely the complete and unprocessed reindeer carcasses were brought to the camp. Reindeer skull fragments found in the layer 4 indicate that the Shchapova 2 site most likely was seasonally occupied during late autumn or winter. However, due to the small amount of bones these data are preliminary. The fauna from the Upper Paleolithic site Shchapova 2 is indicative of tundra-steppe. The presence of red deer and moose remains suggests the forest in the vicinity of the site, probably represented by floodplain forests.

Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections

A recent study of mammoth subfossil remains has demonstrated the potential of using relatively low-coverage high-throughput DNA sequencing to genetically sex specimens, revealing a strong male-biased sex ratio [P. Pečnerová et al., Curr. Biol. 27, 3505–3510.e3 (2017)]. Similar patterns were predicted for steppe bison, based on their analogous female herd-based structure. We genetically sexed subfossil remains of 186 Holarctic bison (Bison spp.), and also 91 brown bears (Ursus arctos), which are not female herd-based, and found that ∼75% of both groups were male, very close to the ratio observed in mammoths (72%). This large deviation from a 1:1 ratio was unexpected, but we found no evidence for sex differences with respect to DNA preservation, sample age, material type, or overall spatial distribution. We further examined ratios of male and female specimens from 4 large museum mammal collections and found a strong male bias, observable in almost all mammalian orders. We suggest that, in mammals at least, 1) wider male geographic ranges can lead to considerably increased chances of detection in fossil studies, and 2) sexual dimorphic behavior or appearance can facilitate a considerable sex bias in fossil and modern collections, on a previously unacknowledged scale. This finding has major implications for a wide range of studies of fossil and museum material.

Parasitic diseases of woolly mammuth (Mammuthus primigenius Blumenbach, 1799)

Paleontological studies are basically the studies of skeletal remains of organisms. However, the discovery of frozen mummies of Pleistocene mammals with preserved soft tissues and internal organs makes it possible to identify some features of animal biology that are inaccessible to the study of skeletons. Fossil frozen mummies become a valuable source of information on diet, seasons of death, migration and ecology, diseases, including parasitic diseases. The cases of detection of fossil parasites in the remains of Pleistocene mammals are always rare and random. Until recently there have been no dedicated effort to search for fossil parasites. Parasites of the Indigirka ground squirrel, the Egorov narrow-skull vole, the Pleistocene steppe bison, the Lena horse (Equus lenensis Russanov, 1968), and the woolly mammoth are known at the moment. This paper presents an overview of parasite finds in woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799). For two centuries of studies of this species, a large volume of diverse data have been accumulated. The aim of this work was a making the review of cases of detection of parasites in mammoth. We discuss the specific cases of mammoth mummy studies, namely the Berezovka mammoth, the Shandrin mammoth, the Kirgilyakh mammoth, the Sopochnaya Karga Mammoth. As a result, the presence of following ectoparasites of the order Diptera was established: Cobboldia (Mamontia) russanovi Grunin, 1973, and Protophormia terraenovae Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830. The stomach botfly Cobboldia (Mamontia) russanovi is highly specific ectoparasite of woolly mammoth. Also helminths of classes Nematoda and Cestoda were found in the mammoth mummies. At the present, it is not possible to reliably determine the species-specific endoparasite of woolly mammoth.