For more information on the issue of the Journal Cranium of the
Werkgroep Pleistocene Zoogdieren that has just been released, or to
order, please contact:
avandergeer [at] wanadoo.nl (editor)
or w.m.s.van.logchem [at] freeler.nl
The newest issue of the Journal Cranium of the Werkgroep Pleistocene
Zoogdieren has been released. This special volume (19-1) is in English,
and dedicated to the description of the mammoth herd of Sevsk. The
author, Dr. Evgeny Mashenko, works at the Palaeontological Institute of
the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, and wrote this work as his PhD
thesis.
Individual development, biology and evolution of the woolly mammoth
by Evgeny N. Maschenko
No. Pages: 120 including 41 figures, 26 tables, and 36 photos
(black-white)
Price of Cranium 19-1: 20 Euro including postage
To order, please contact:
avandergeer [at] wanadoo.nl (editor)
or w.m.s.van.logchem [at] freeler.nl
For thousands of years the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) has
attracted much attention from humans. Not only because the woolly
mammoth and man once both belonged to the same Late Pleistocene fauna
and ecosystem, but also because the woolly mammoth may be considered the
most popular of all extinct Ice Age mammals. It is also the most
intensively studied extinct mammal of the Northern Hemisphere, the
larger part of which constitutes its former range. The causes of the
extinction of the mammoth and many other large mammals of the 'mammoth
fauna' at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene
have long been debated and still give rise to a flow of scientific and
popular publications world-wide.
Russia is particularly rich in mammalian fossils and harbours a
comparatively large number of professional paleontologists whose
research focuses on the fauna of the Late Pleistocene. The woolly
mammoth has been made study of for more than 200 years here, and a
multitude of texts on the subject - mostly in Russian - have appeared.
In 1998, Evgeny Nikolaevich Maschenko (*1961) got his PhD from the
University of Moscow on a dissertation entitled: "Individual
development, biology, and evolution of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus
primigenius (BLUMENBACH, 1799)." Dr. Maschenko is researcher and keeper
of the Mammalia collection at the Moscow Institute of Paleontology and
has specialized in fossil primates, mammoths, Siberia, and Mesozoic
mammals. He has authored over sixty scientific publications so far,
thirty of which deal with fossil primates. He started his research into
the mammoth's individual development under the guidance of Prof. Dr. V.
Reshetov.
In the summer of 1988, bones of woolly mammoths were unearthed in a sand
and gravel pit at Sevsk in the Bryansk region, 485 km SW of Moscow, and
from September of that year Maschenko frequently visited the pit to
direct the ensuing field work, which was completed in 1991. Over 4,000
mammoth bones that belong to at least 33 individuals were recovered.
Among the finds are five complete skeletons of baby mammoths and two
complete skeletons of adult individuals. They soon became known as 'the
Sevsk mammoth herd' and were exhibited in various European countries in
the early nineties.