The Quaternary mammals from Kozhamzhar locality (Pavlodar Region, Kazakhstan)

The paper describes a new location of fossils of large mammals in Pavlodar region. It is located 120 km north of Pavlodar on the left bank of the Irtysh River. The most exposed parts of the section have coordinates 53°01'02" N, 75°57'40" E at v. Aktogay, 53°01'59" N, 75°52'18" E at v. Kozhamzhar. Remains of Elasmotherium sibiricum, Mammuthus ex gr. trogontherii-chosaricus, Mammuthus primigenius and Bison priscus are found in the alluvial deposits of the Tobolsk age in the Kozhamzhar locality. The bones lie at a depth of about 7 meters. The Siberian elasmotherium skull has no facial section. The skull from the Kozhamzhar locality is bigger in size compared with the skull from Eastern Europe. The lower jaw of the elephant in size and in teeth morphology of the last change is very similar to that of Mammuthus trogontherii chosaricus Dubr. These species are of great stratigraphic significance: M. trogontherii refers to the orthostratigraphic line of mammothoid elephants and E. sibiricum belongs to the parastratigraphic group of rhinos which is of great importance to the south of Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and the South Eastern Europe. The elasmotherium remains are sufficiently numerous in the Central and Northern Kazakhstan (south of the West Siberian Plain). B.S. Ko-zhamkulova (1981) observed 30 locations of Early Neopleistocene. The remains of elasmotherium in Pavlodar region are known from four locations: Podpusk, Moiseevka-Zhelezinka, Grigorievka and Kozhamzhar. Kozhamkulova connects the remains of the Siberian rhinoceros in Kazakhstan with the Koshkurgansk faunal assemblages of Early Neopleistocene. The finds of elasmotherium in Kozhamzhar, earlier in Grigorievka, are confined to the deposits of the Tobolsk horizon of Middle Neopleistocene. In both locations the remains of elasmotherium were found together with the remains of an elephant close to M. ex gr. trogontherii chosaricus. These data agree well with the data of Shvyreva (Shvyreva, 2015) for Eastern Europe for Middle Neopleistocene. In Grigorievka E. sibiricus and M. trogontherii chosaricus were found in the composition of the Irtysh faunal assemblage (Shpansky et al., 2007): Bison priscus, Megaloceros giganteus rufi, Camelus knoblochi, Saiga borealis, and others. The species composition of Kozhamzhar and Grigorievka is very well compared with the Singilskiy faunal assemblage of Eastern Europe (Shpansky, 2009).

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