In two far Eastern caves archaeologists for the first time on the territory of Russia have found fossilized remains of giant flying squirrels (Petaurista tetyukhensis), who lived in the late Pleistocene (30 to 50 thousand years ago). This is the northernmost discovery of this species squirrels, says the press service of the Ural Federal University (Urfu), citing an article in a scientific journal Paleoworld.
"during the warm periods of the middle Pleistocene giant flying squirrels were far to the North. Probably one of the populations has been retained in the intermountain basins of the Pacific coast until the late Pleistocene" – said one of the authors, senior researcher, Ural Federal University Dmitry Gimranov.
Now giant flying squirrels of the family Sciuridae are common in Northern Indo-China, East and South-East Asia. The closest to Russia these animals live on the Japanese island of Honshu. Flying squirrels live in trees and move between them, planning with leather membranes between the forelegs and hind legs.
The earliest fossils of flying squirrels of the genus Petaurista, the scientists found in sediments of early Pleistocene age in southern China. The most Northern discovery of the Petaurista of the warm period of the middle Pleistocene done in the cave of Zhoukoudian in Northern China. For the late Pleistocene the main findings of this kind were located in Japan and China.
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far Eastern refuge
In the course of excavations in the far Eastern caves Dry and Tetjuhina, which lasted from 2012 to 2016, paleontologists Michael Tiunov and Dmitry Gimranov found new fossils. They were a fragment of upper jaw with two teeth and five teeth and could say that flying squirrels have penetrated much farther North.
Radiocarbon analysis showed that the age of the teeth – more than 30 thousand years, that is, their owners lived in the late Pleistocene period. According to the morphological analysis of fossils belonged to the giant flying squirrels Petaurista tetyukhensis. The discovery was the most Northern animal of this species.
Scientists believe that flying squirrels were in the forests of the Far East due to global climate change.
"Then taiga forests were the dominant type of vegetation that provided habitat for giant flying squirrels", – says Dmitry Gimranov.
"In the late Pleistocene it was the northernmost population of giant flying squirrels. Conditions of their habitat was probably close to the environment of modern Chinese giant flying squirrels. This species occupies spruce forests at an altitude of about three thousand meters above sea level in Western China, it feeds mainly on young shoots and leaves, and also pine nuts" – the scientist has added.
Scientists believe that the mountains of Sikhote-Alin, where they found the remains of flying squirrels has not only allowed the survival of some mammals, which��haunted by that time extinct in other areas, but also their speciation.
