The "giant" beaver, Trogontherium cuvieri Fischer, 1809, is an extinct species that was widely distributed all over Palaearctic Realm. And the well-approved temporal range of this species is from the Late Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene. Here we report a new specimen of T. cuvieri from the upper Pleistocene of the Songhua River drainage area near Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. It coexists with a typical north Eurasia Mammuthus-Coelodonta fauna, in which major elements including Mammuthus primigenius, Equus ferus, Procapra sp, Bison sp, Megaloceros sp., Marmota sp., Castor fiber, etc. The C-14 dating on mammal bones from the same site yields an average age of ca. 40ka BP, falling in the range of the MIS-3a. The discovery of T. cuvieri indicates that this wide distributed species survived into the late Pleistocene in northeast China. During MIS-3a, the northeast China was rather warm and humid, and probably presented a favorable environment for T. cuvieri. The ultimate extinction of T. cuvieri, still need further research and more evidence, could be related more likely to hunting by the late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers than climate change.
1.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Vertebrate Paleontol & Paleoanthropol, Key Lab Vertebrate Evolut & Human Origins, 142 Xi Zhi Men Wai St, Beijing 100044, Peoples R China 2.CAS Ctr Excellence Life & Paleoenvironm, Beijing 100044, Peoples R China 3.Univ Chinese Acad Sci, Beijing 100049, Peoples R China
Recommended Citation:
Yang, Yangheshan,Li, Qiang,Fostowicz-Frelik, Lucja,et al. Last record of Trogontherium cuvieri (Mammalia, Rodentia) from the late Pleistocene of China[J]. QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL,2019-01-01,513:30-36