Mammoth steppe

The mammoth steppe or steppe-tundra represents a special form of the steppe, during the cold periods of the Pleistocene - was spread over much of northern Eurasia from Central Europe to East Asia, but also in North America - especially Saale glaciation and Weichsel glaciation. Recent research traces as opposed to a grass steppe the image of a herb -rich vegetation.

The structure mighty inland ice and the consequent withdrawal of the seas had a dry continental climate result. Due to the grinding action of the glacier and subsequent deflation was also a fine loess and sand dust which was deposited as a layer of clay in extensive areas especially along the seasonally dry river beds.

This provided the ideal space for the development of the mammoth steppe, steppe form in the mix steppe and tundra plants. The scenery was almost free of trees to the predominant plant species included grasses, sedges, herbs, dwarf birch and polar willow. Often the Mammoth Steppe is compared because of this mixture with today's tundra, but agreed only partially. Separating features are mainly the different positions of the sun and the associated seasonal cycles, issuing the mammoth steppe with their prevailing in many parts of lighting conditions at mid-latitudes of the northern tundra with pronounced polar summers and winters. This created a species and especially nutrient-rich vegetation, additionally favored by the occurring due to the nearby glacier long-lasting anticyclones. Recent studies based on DNA studies from the permafrost According took herbs during the last glaciation phase up to 63 % of the plant community a typical were, among others, plantain, mugwort and chrysanthemum. Contrast, grasses reached only about 27 %.

The inhabitants of this steppe included not only the character of animals of this habitat, the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius ), other large mammals such as the woolly rhinoceros ( Coelodonta antiquitatis ), the musk ox (Ovibos moschatus ), reindeer (Rangifer tarandus ), the saiga antelope ( Saiga tatarica ), but also the extinct steppe bison (Bison priscus ) and the Pleistocene subspecies Equus caballus lenensis wild horses. The large animals subsisted not only, as originally adopted in part, exclusively of grasses, but also of the herbaceous plants, which could be proved by means of stomach content of carcasses from the permafrost, such as at the 2007 near the river Kolyma in Siberia discovered ice mummy of a wool rhino, which at over 52% contained residues of herbage. It is not clear whether these specific landform created by the grazing activities of these Megaherbivoren and they disappeared after the animals became extinct, or whether the disappearance of this landscape form meant that the typical large mammals became extinct.

In today's landscape areas, no direct comparison to the mammoth steppe habitat exists. Closest to her, there are the treeless areas at high altitudes, such as pasture or Central Asian high mountain valleys. A project that could help to clarify this issue is carried out in northeastern Siberia in the form of a Pleistocene Park. Here one tries to reconvert the tundra by grazing with large herbivores in a mammoth steppe.