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1. Glacial refugia were core areas for the survival of temperate species during unfavourable environmental conditions and were the sources of postglacial recolonizations. Unfortunately, the locations of glacial refugia of animals and plants are usually described by models, without reference to facts about real geographical ranges at that time. 2.Careful consideration of the faunal assemblages of archaeological sites from the Younger Palaeolithic, which are precisely dated to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), gives indications about the distribution of species during the LGM (23 000-16 000 BP ) and provides evidence for the locations of glacial refugia for mammalian species in Europe. 3. In Europe, 47 LGM sites, dating from 23 000 to 16 000 BP and containing typical temperate mammal species, have been described. The geographical range of these archaeological sites clearly shows a distribution which differs from the hypothesized traditional refuge areas of the temperate fauna. A considerable number of sites situated in the Dordogne in southwestern France and the Carpathian region contain records of red deer Cervus elaphus , roe deer Capreolus capreolus , wild boar Sus scrofa and red fox Vulpes vulpes . 4. The faunal composition of the majority of the evaluated Palaeolithic sites in the southern European peninsulas (with the exception of Greece), as well as France and the Carpathian region, indicates the co-occurrence of these temperate species with cold-adapted faunal elements such as mammoth Mammuthus primigenius and/or reindeer Rangifer tarandus . 5. The survival of species in Central European refugia would have significant consequences for phylogeography and would be revealed by the dominant distribution of haplotypes, originating from this region. A Carpathian refuge could also be the reason for the very early records of small mammals or mustelids from the Late-Glacial or Interstadials before the LGM in regions like southern Germany.

Recent palaeogenetic studies indicate a highly dynamic history in collared lemmings (Dicrostonyx spp.), with several demographical changes linked to climatic fluctuations that took place during the last glaciation. At the western range margin of D. torquatus, these changes were characterized by a series of local extinctions and recolonizations. However, it is unclear whether this pattern represents a local phenomenon, possibly driven by ecological edge effects, or a global phenomenon that took place across large geographical scales. To address this, we explored the palaeogenetic history of the collared lemming using a next‐generation sequencing approach for pooled mitochondrial DNA amplicons. Sequences were obtained from over 300 fossil remains sampled across Eurasia and two sites in North America. We identified five mitochondrial lineages of D. torquatus that succeeded each other through time across Europe and western Russia, indicating a history of repeated population extinctions and recolonizations, most likely from eastern Russia, during the last 50 000 years. The observation of repeated extinctions across such a vast geographical range indicates large‐scale changes in the steppe‐tundra environment in western Eurasia during the last glaciation. All Holocene samples, from across the species' entire range, belonged to only one of the five mitochondrial lineages. Thus, extant D. torquatus populations only harbour a small fraction of the total genetic diversity that existed across different stages of the Late Pleistocene. In North American samples, haplotypes belonging to both D. groenlandicus and D. richardsoni were recovered from a Late Pleistocene site in south‐western Canada. This suggests that D. groenlandicus had a more southern and D. richardsoni a more northern glacial distribution than previously thought. This study provides significant insights into the population dynamics of a small mammal at a large geographical scale and reveals a rather complex demographical history, which could have had bottom‐up effects in the Late Pleistocene steppe‐tundra ecosystem.

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The variability in the mandible dimensions has been investigated in bats of the genus Plecotus Geoffroy, 1818 from Central Europe. The material consisted of 100 individuals of P. auritus and 100 individuals of P. austriacus. The variability in the mandible length appeared to be relatively low in both species (Cv = 3.41-3.99), whereas that in the height of the ramus mandibulae was slightly higher (Cu = 4.93-8.62). For both species the common values of the measurements of the mandible length are found in 10.8-11.0 mm classes, which contain 4 per cent of P. auritus and 18 per cent of P. austriacus. As to the height of the ramus mandibulae, the common range for both species falls to the 3.2 mm class (3 per cent of P. auritus and 4 per cent of P. austriacus). A complete separation of both species can be done by simultaneous comparison of two dimensions using the diagram of their correlation considering morphological characteristics of the mandible. This method may find practical application in indentifying fossil materials or those in owl pellets.