The large mammals of North-Minusinsk basin in the Last Glacial period Dmitriy G. Malikov Department of Paleontology and Historical Geology, Tomsk State University, Lenina, 36, 634050 Tomsk, Russia article info Article history: Available online 10 November 2015 Keywords: Mammoth fauna Large mammals Biodiversity Last Glacial period Middle Siberia abstract Twenty five species of large mammals are reliably established for the North-Minusinsk basin in the Last Glacial period. Another nine species of large mammal remains whose regular habitation is questionable are also known. The species biodiversity of mammals of open steppe landscapes is three times higher than the biodiversity of animals of closed and semi-closed forest biotopes. Species of closed and semi- closed forested landscapes are dominant in the modern fauna of the region. Most of the species who lived in open landscapes of the region became extinct. A possible reason for the extinction of large representatives of the mammoth fauna is the reduction of their migration ability. As a result of reduction of the area steppe landscapes beyond the depression, migration routes of large representatives of the mammoth fauna were disrupted. The steppe phytocoenoses, preserved in the territory of Minusinsk depression to the present, were not able to maintain the stability of the mammoth fauna. This may have led to the extinction of large animals. However, the stability of steppe ecosystems in the region promoted the preservation of most micro-mammals, as well as the later extinction of some large mammals in the region. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Minusinsk depression is situated in southern Middle Sibe- ria. It is a part of the zoogeographic boundary between the West- Siberian and Mid-Siberian subdomains of the Euro-Siberian zoogeographic domain (Rogacheva, 1988). The Minusinsk depres- sion consists of three basins: North-Minusinsk, Sydo-Erbinsk and South-Minusinsk basins. In this paper, the author analyzed the large mammals' fauna composition only in the territory of North- Minusinsk basin. In other parts of the Minusinsk depression, the large multispecies locations are known in small amounts. The natural boundaries of the North-Minusinsk basin are Eastern Say- ans (in the east), Kuznetsk Alatau (in the west), Batenev (in the south) and Solgon (in the north) ridges (Fig. 1). Research related to the fossil mammals was conducted many times in this region. However, they were mostly as a part of work of archaeological expeditions (Abramova et al., 1991; Ermolova, 1977, 1982; Abramova, 1979a,b), so the detailed study of fossil mammals has not been conducted. As a result, a comprehensive analysis of Pleistocene mammals' fauna of the region has not been carried out. Several papers by Ovodov (1992, 2009) are devoted to the solution of this problem. These publications described the species compo- sition of mammals, mainly on the basis of cave sites from the ter- ritory of Khakass Republic. However, these data are also insufficient. The author analyzed the large mammal fauna composition from the North-Minusinsk basin in the Last Glacial period. This time interval was selected because the extinction of many species of dominant mammals took place at the end of the last Ice Age. The study of the spatial distribution patterns of mammals can help in answering the question about the reasons of extinction at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. 2. Material and methods The Last Glacial period (LGP) is the time of development of the last ice sheets and mountain-valley glaciations. The time interval for LGP is 24 000e10 300 BP (MIS 2). The deposits accumulated during this time range in the Minusinsk depression correspond to the Sartanian horizon of the West Siberian Regional Chart of Qua- ternary deposits (Volkova and Babushkin, 2000). The list of fauna of large mammal species from this territory (Table 1) is based on materials that were collected by the author, E-mail address: knight_1991@mail.ru. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.10.055 1040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International 420 (2016) 208e220