A05_P07

Implications concerning the palaeoenvironment of a Late Pleistocene woolly rhinoceros specimen lived in the Pannonian Basin

Major I¹,  Lisztes-Szabó Z¹, Gasparik M², Magyari E³, Szabó B³, Pandolfi L⁴, Borel A⁵, Futó I¹, Horváth A¹, Kiss G¹, Markó A⁶, Molnár M¹

¹Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Debrecen, Hungary, ²Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary, ³Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, ⁴Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy, ⁵Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme Préhistorique , Paris, France, ⁶Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, Hungary

The excavations (2014-2017) at the Pécel-Kis hársas site (Hungary) yielded the remains of an old female woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) together with four chert and three obsidian artefacts. To gather more information on this species and the contemporary palaeoenvironment of the finding location, multi-isotopic analyses were performed.  The specimen died ca. 20.5 ka, at the very end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) of the Pleistocene, presumably due to Epigravettian hunters. In a European context, it is one of the latest occurrences of the species in the continent. Based on bone stable carbon and nitrogen isotope, dental wear and dental plant microfossil results, a lichen (possibly moss) dominant diet could be drawn. Such diet element was so far unknown concerning woolly rhinos. In accordance with the optimum environmental conditions of the foraging plants, the stable strontium and oxygen isotope results of bioapatite also suggest a relatively cold local climate with a calculated mean annual air temperature of around 0.7 ºC. Thus, a mosaic, pioneering vegetation and a tundra/steppe-like habitat can be assumed to have been dominated at the Pécel-Kis hársas site at the end of the LGM. Considering the longer turnover time of the ¹⁵N isotope in collagen, the harsh conditions could probably endure for a longer period, not just for a winter season.