Notes on skulls of Pleistocene Saiga of Northern Eurasia

Eighteen fossil skulls of male Saiga from Northern Eurasia and 33 recent skulls from Kalmykia and Kazakhstan have been studied. Saiga from both the Khazarian Fauna of the Volga and Mammoth Fauna of Europe and Siberia are referred to Saiga horealis Tschersky, 1876. During the Pleistocene, 5. borealis distribution extended from England in the west to Alaska in the east and is characterized by an elongated neurocranium, small frontal angle of the temporal bone from the plane of the frontal, and long nasal bones.

S. borealis was a typical representative of the “mammoth biome”; in the Pleistocene periglacial steppes and cryogenic savannahs. Two subspecies are recognized: S. borealis borealis Tschersky (Eastern Sibera and Alaska); and S.b. prisca Nehring, 1891 (Europe, Urals and Western Siberia). At the end of the Pleistocene, when the mammoth disappeared, the range of S. borealis was reduced. Today they live only in West Mongolia (S. borealis mongolica Bannikov, 1946). S. tatarica tatarica was widely distributed in the other territories of the steppe and semidesert zones of Eurasia. The arid landscapes of Transcaucasia and Kazakhstan were inhabited by Saiga with thinner legs and shorter nasal bones, such as S. tatarica binagadensis Alekperova, 1953, from the middle Pleistocene of Azerbaijan (Bynagady). Fossil skulls from the Ural River that are large, but with a short neurocranium are identified as Saiga sp. cf. S. tatarica Linnaeus, 1766.