The Carpathians and Lower Danube as a barrier for the dispersal of steppe rodents in the Pleistocene and Holocene: Ground squirrels as a case study

Abstract

Ground squirrel fossils of from three localities of the Dniester area were studied: 1) Tadirka Cave, Khmelnytskyi oblast’, Early Holocene (Ridush, 2022); 2) Zeleniv, Chernivtsi Oblast’, Last Glacial Maximum (Ridush et al., 2021; Popiuk, Ridush, 2022); 3) Korman’ 9, Chernivtsi Oblast’, Epigravettian site, 22 cal BP (Kulakowska et al., 2021). Ground squirrels are represented by S. odessanus only in each locality. In such a way, our new data support the barrier role of the Carpathians and the Low Danube for the dispersal of ground squirrel species and, generally, the history of occurrence of ground squirrel species in Subcarpathia outlined above.