S. V. LESHCHINSKYTomsk State University
36 Lenin Ave., Tomsk, 634050, Russia
E-mail: sl@ggf.tsu.ru
Introduction
At the beginning of the XXI century, paleoecological studies of Pleistocene megafauna were first conducted in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug from the point of view of the influence of the abiotic environment on large fossil mammals, mainly mammoths. The object of our study is the paleofaunal material of the Lugovskoe* locality, one of the features of which is the absolute predominance of mammoth bones and teeth over the bone remains of other megafauna representatives, and, of course, the "highlight" of Lugovsky-a mammoth vertebra pierced by a Paleolithic tool (Zenin et al., 2003). In addition, radiocarbon dating of mammoth and woolly rhinoceros bones and teeth was used to obtain "young" isotopic dates that are still not typical for the center of Western Siberia (Orlova et al., 2004).
Paleoecological studies are based on a comparative analysis of the remains of fossil mammals of Lugovsky (about 5,500 specimens) with Pleistocene megafauna from Volchya Mane (about 500 specimens), Shestakov (more than 700 specimens), Kochegur (more than 150 specimens), Kolyvan (about 50 specimens), Bolynedorokhov (about 200 specimens) and other localities (more than 300 copies) of the West Siberian Plain**. It should be noted that a significant part (more than 4,000 copies) of Lugovsky's collection, collected in 1999-2004, is represented by rather small fragments that are of little use for research. Therefore, approximately 1,500 whole bones and teeth of mammoths and 65 of other mammals have been studied in detail.
The comparative analysis made the most extensive use of published materials on diseases associated with metabolic disorders, especially enzootic and endemic diseases of the musculoskeletal system of both modern and Pleistocene-Holocene large mammals, including humans [Logginov, 1890; Rokhlin et al., 1934; Damperov, 1939; Chepurov et al., 1955; Cherkasova, 1954; K ...
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