The New Subspecies of the European Water Buffalo (Artiodactyla, Bovidae) from the Upper Pleistocene of the Russian Plain
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New Subspecies of the European Water Buffalo (Artiodactyla, Bovidae) from the Upper Pleistocene of the Russian Plain I. A. Vislobokovaa, *, K. K. Tarasenkoa, and A. V. Lopatina aBorissiak
Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117647 Russia *e-mail: [email protected] Received March 4, 2020; revised March 6, 2020; accepted March 6, 2020
Abstract—A new subspecies of the fossil European water buffalo, Bubalus murrensis extremus, is described from an almost complete skull found in the Upper Pleistocene deposits of the Lukerino village near the city of Kolomna (Moscow Region). The fossil is dated to the Allerød interstadial (12.8 cal. kyr). Until now, the species was only known from the Middle and early Late Pleistocene of Europe. New data allow us to clarify the diagnosis and occurrence of the species. Keywords: Bubalus murrensis extremus, Bovidae, Upper Pleistocene, Allerød, Moscow Region, Kolomna, Lukerino, Russian Plain DOI: 10.1134/S0031030120060118
INTRODUCTION The presence of buffaloes of the genus Bubalus in the Pleistocene of Europe has been known since the late nineteenth century (Rütimeyer, 1878), but their fossil finds are still extremely rare in this region. Only incomplete skulls with horn cores have been found in Western Europe, as well as some fragments of horn cores from the interglacial deposits of the Middle and lower Upper Pleistocene, mostly in the Rhineland of Germany, with solitary finds in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Greece, and Romania (Berckhemer, 1927, 1928; Schertz, 1937; Franzen, Koenigswald, 1979; Neuferr, Igel, 1983; Rdulescu, Samson, 1985; Koenigswald, 1986, 2011; Dam et al., 1997; Schreiber, Munk, 2002; Pushkina, 2007; Anzidei et al., 2012; Masini, 2013; Koenigswald et al., 2019). All of these fossils belong to the extinct European water buffalo Bubalus murrensis (Berckhemer, 1927). In Russia, Bubalus fossils were represented by a fragment of a horn core from the Lower Pleistocene of the Tsimbal quarry (Taman Peninsula) (Burchak-Abramovich, 1952; Burchak-Abramovich, Vekua, 1980) and a metacarpal fragment from the Upper Paleolithic site of the Geographical Society Cave in the Primorye (Far East) (Ovodov, 2005). The presence of Bubalus murrensis on Russian territory was first revealed only in 2019 (Vislobokova et al., 2020). An almost complete skull of an adult individual of this species, exceptional in its preservation, was discovered by the authors in the collections of the Kolomna Regional Museum (KKM). The skull had been found in 1939 near the village of Lukerino
(city of Kolomna, Moscow Region) on the Kolomenka River, the right tributary of the Moscow River (Volga River Basin), 4.5 km west of Kolomna. Its calibrated age, obtained by radiocarbon dating (14C) of bone collagen, is about 12.8 ka (Vislobokova et al., 2020). This date corresponds to the last warming of the Late Pleistocene, the Allerød interstadial. The study of this specimen provided new information on the structure of the skull in Bubalus murrensis and made it possible to clarify the diagnosis
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