Talk:Mammoth steppe/Archive 1

Merge
Neither steppe nor tundra, would be highly inaccurate to merge with either one. Guettarda 19:07, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I just looked at the article called steppe-tundra, it is misleading and should NOT be merged with Steppe. Steppe is is used for thing and Tundra for another. There is an article on Tundra and an article on Steppe, those articles should link to each other. --Son_of_the_Tundra 12:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I believe the "Steppe-tundra" notion comes from paleogeography; there's no such biome at present but there has been such paleoenvironment until some-ten thousands years ago. If anywhere - it belongs here in a separate article, to my opinion - Introvert   talk  17:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Exactly. Guettarda 21:23, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

AFD
This article was nominated for deletion. The result was no consensus. See Articles for deletion/Steppe-tundra &middot; Katefan0(scribble) 19:08, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Steppe-tundra notability
The article is very relevant to a hypothesis of European origins in Ice Age hunting communities on the steppe-tundra, the environment deserves its own page in any case as it's not the same thing as tundra or steppe. Overagainst (talk) 21:28, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Modern analogues
According to Ecological Structure of Recent and Last Glacial Mammalian Faunas in Northern Eurasia: The Case of Altai-Sayan Refugium, the modern Altai–Sayan region, especially its eastern part (which includes the Uvs Nuur region or Ubsunur Hollow mentioned in the article), does provide a remarkably close analogue to Pleistocene tundra-steppe landscapes, especially in faunal composition, or at least the closest recent analogue available. I'm not an expert, however, so I'll refrain from editing the article.

I found the article through a Google search for "uvs nuur" "analogue", inspired by reading the article Ubsunur Hollow, which did strike me as similar to what I understand Pleistocene tundra-steppe landscapes to be like, and I found Ubsunur Hollow via Uvs Lake, which is listed on 50th parallel north, having read (in German Wikipedia and elsewhere) that modern landscapes thought similar to Pleistocene tundra-steppes can be found in Central Asia and Southern Siberia, at comparable latitudes (to European Pleistocene tundra-steppes), but higher elevations (especially mountain valleys or high plains), where seasonal light conditions are comparable to the middle latitudes of – especially Central – Europe, but temperatures are lower due to the higher elevations and aridity higher due to higher continentality, mimicking Pleistocene conditions. –-Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please Florian, edit the article - it could benefit from it. Regards, William Harris  •   talk •   12:07, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Another observation: In the context of the Eurasian Pleistocene tundra-steppe, I keep encountering mentions of Artemisia as a major or characteristic component, besides (or after) grasses, as far as finding the biome outright referred to as "Artemisia steppe" sometimes. While looking for similar modern environments, I came across the Columbia Plateau with its sagebrush steppes and grasslands, and its loess deposits, in fact learning that Artemisia, which I only knew as mugwort so far, also includes sagebrush (the best-known being A. tridentata, the big sagebrush), and that a modern "Artemisia steppe" is commonly known as sagebrush steppe; and therefore I wonder if biomes relatively similar to the Eurasian Pleistocene tundra-steppe can be found on the plateau. See also shrub-steppe for similar biomes in North America. (I now see you have mentioned sagebrush below already. Turns out I was just ignorant as to what is meant by Artemisia in this context. I also realise that modern sagebrush steppes in North America are not as cold as the Pleistocene tundra-steppe environments, but I was just looking for a reasonably close, and familiar especially to North American readers, contemporary analogue, which we also happen to have numerous images of. I suppose you could describe tundra-steppe as a type of shrub-steppe in a generic sense, just a particularly cold one with permafrost that is very rare in the modern world.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:10, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hm, seems I was misled. The kind of Artemisia common in tundra-steppe appears to be better exemplified by A. borealis, a herbaceous plant, not A. tridentata or other shrubby forms. Shrubs did exist, but were more typically willows, not sagebrushes. Also, tundra-type plants do not seem to exist or are rare in North American sagebrush steppes, so they are probably not a particularly close analogue after all. Sorry. The photo of the Ukok Plateau shows a grassland without any shrubs visible, though; I wonder how representative this type of pure grassland is of the actual paleo-biome. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:50, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hello Florian, thanks for your thoughtful proposal. I would suggest that because it was such a vast biome that stretched across both time and area, that there were probably some regional variations in different places and at different times. The advance and retreat of larch forests across the Taimyr lowlands is a good example - they were in existence between 48,000–25,000 YBP, then gone, then back later 9,400-2,900 YBP, now gone! I would also suggest that the earlier "steppe-tundra" concept was based on the finding, in certain time periods, of the seeds of plants (extracted from frozen mammoth dung!) from both steppe (grassland predominating) and tundra (small succulents and dwarf willow). The picture I am seeing is a vast, dry grassland steppe but along its rare watercourses were the smaller tundra-like plants that provided small arteries of green. At the end of the Late Pleistocene the rains came and that was the end of much of the grassland along with much of the taxa that it supported. Ukok Plateau represents a very dry area that is thought not to have changed since the mammoth steppe, and although it may be the last surviving trace, it probably only represents a snapshot of some parts of the original steppe. I have largely redeveloped this article because it directly relates to my interest in Late Pleistocene wolves and ultimately the dog. The mammoth steppe is where the dog diverged, possibly alongside human hunter-gatherers or immediately before, between 17,000-40,000 years ago. These were part of that huge environment, and although few people keep a watch on this article and it has few visitors, it is linked from many other articles. Regards, William Harris  •   talk •   21:04, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comment. Yes, your take is reasonable. You are clearly much better informed on this topic as I am (and moreover, I failed to read the article in its current form, as it already answered my questions), and have done admirable work on this article. Thank you very much for your efforts. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:33, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * You are most welcome. I have read all of the sources that I cited in order to form a picture of what happened on the mammoth steppe. As more research is conducted, our picture will become even more fine-tuned. Regards,