Middle Pleistocene warming phase based on the deposits of a buried oyster reef, Southern Lesser Kuril Islands

A new subspecies of Bembidion sanatum (Coleoptera: Carabidae) endemic to the Mendeleev Volcano (Kunashir Island, Russia)

“…The formation of the subaerial part of the volcano was followed by catastrophic caldera-forming eruptions that could have led to the destruction of most of the volcano's cone in the Pleistocene (Middle Würm) and Holocene, 36 and 2.5 thousand years ago (Abdurakhmanov et al, 2004). In addition, as those eruptions of the Mendeleev Volcano could have taken place in the early episodes of considerable climate cooling (Sakagushi, 1983;Yasuda, 1995;Razjigaeva et al, 2014), this combined seems to have hardly allowed B. sanatum survival on the Mendeleev Volcano. Therefore, the nearly simultaneous and the strongest mid-Würm eruptions of both Mendeleev and Golovnin volcanoes that completely destroyed the natural territorial complex of the southern Kunashir Island (Melekestsev et al, 1974(Melekestsev et al, , 1988Razjigaeva et al, 2014) could soundly be taken as the lowest temporal limit whence a successful colonization of the Mendeleev Volcano could be suggested following a strong eruption (ca.…”