Late Pleistocene permafrost of the Yedoma type constitutes a valuable paleo-environmental archive due to the presence of numerous and well-preserved floral and faunal fossils. The study of the fossil Yedoma inventory allows for qualitative and quantitative reconstructions of past ecosystem and climate conditions and variations over time.
Micro- and macrofossils preserved and exposed in the Yedoma cliff of Sobo-Sise were examined to reconstruct paleo-environmental conditions of the last ice age since about 52 000 years ago.
Fossil pollen reflects tundra-steppe vegetation that maintained the late Pleistocene Mammoth fauna. Part of it was the woolly rhinoceros, which has now been identified for the first time in the Lena Delta. Fossil head capsules of chironomid larvae were used to reconstruct the mean July temperature which revealed warmer summers than today for several periods between 51 000 and 41 000 years ago. The study extends earlier Yedoma studies on the paleo-ecology of eastern Siberia and relates to ongoing research on Sobo-Sise by Fuchs et al. (2020) and by Wetterich et al. (2020).
