New evidence on late Pleistocene paleofauna of Mongolia (materials from the Moiltyn-Am site)

One of the main problems in reconstructing the paleoenvironment of human habitation in the Late Pleistocene in Mongolia is the scarcity of faunal remains found at archaeological sites. Faunal finds furnish archaeological research with data such as the type of paleolandscape, species of hunting animals, and samples for radiocarbon dating. Excavation works of 2019 yielded small faunal collection which enriched the data already known from other Paleolithic sites in Mongolia, indicating that steppe was predominant in the Khangai Mountains in the Late Pleistocene with typical mammals for this type of landscape, many of which became extinct in the Holocene. An important discovery was a relative homogeneity of the hunting species known in Northern and Central Mongolia. Horses (together with onagers) became the main hunting species in the strategy of food acquiring. Recently, the number of faunal finds identified as belonging to the Bovidae family of the MIS 3 has increased at the sites of the Late Pleistocene in Mongolia. The remains of the Tarbagan marmot from Moiltyn-am can be described as accidental findings, since this animal still inhabits the valley of the Orkhon River. However, Tarbagan marmots could have been the hunting species as well, although the traces of butchering have not been observed on their bones. The faunal assemblage of the Orkhon valley is important for understanding the spread of the teriofauna, especially horses, because geographically this territory had a passage with open steppe landscapes leading to the Gobi.