The “crossroads” is a recurring trope in popular and academic writing on the South Caucasus. This can conjure simplistic explanatory frameworks of timeless “silk road” connectivity, or region as meeting point East West, democracy authoritarianism, Christianity Islam. However, it also evocative powerful ways that movement people, goods, ideas across have shaped its past present. In this contribu...

Field investigations in the northwestern segment of Greater Caucasus, a Late Cenozoic orogen, have permitted establishment two new geosites, namely Ubin and Bezeps geosites. Both represent Berriasian–Middle Valanginian (Early Cretaceous) marine deposits with abundant trace fossils. The latter are attributed to Nereites ichnofacies indicate on deep palaeoenvironments (this interpretation challen...

To resolve the phylogeny of certain mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups in eastern Europe and estimate their evolutionary age, a total of 73 samples representing mitochondrial haplogroups U4, HV*, and R1 were selected for complete mitochondrial genome sequencing from a collection of about 2,000 control region sequences sampled in eastern (Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians) and western (P...

UNLABELLED • PREMISE OF THE STUDY The Caucasus represents one of the world's biodiversity hotspots and includes the climatic refugia Hyrcan on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and Colchis on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, where different species survived during the Quaternary climatic oscillations. We evaluated the genetic diversity of the relict tree Zelkova carpinifolia shared bet...

By matching of repeat optical satellite images it is now possible to investigate glacier dynamics within large regions of the world and also between regions to improve knowledge about glacier dynamics in space and time. In this study we investigate whether the negative glacier mass balance seen over large parts of the world has caused the glaciers to change their speeds. The studied regions are...

The Common hamster (Cricetus cricetus) is one of the most endangered mammals in Western and Central Europe. Its genetic diversity in Russia and Kazakhstan was investigated for the first time. The analysis of sequences of an mtDNA control region and cytochrome b gene revealed at least three phylogenetic lineages. Most of the species range (approximately 3 million km2), including central Russia, ...