Herbaceous communities in forest ecosystems on the southern part of the Russian Plain appeared in the Middle Miocene (∼10 Ma BP). In the Late Miocene (∼7 Ma BP), feather-grass steppe associations...

An integrated study of the loess–soil sequence in the coastal exposure near the settlement of Beglitsa (Rostov oblast) allowed us, for the first time, to reconstruct the landscape-climatic changes that occurred in the eastern Azov region over the course of the Late Pleistocene. In the south of the periglacial zone, considerable differences between intensity of the loess accumulation in the Early and Late Valdai Cryochrons were revealed. In the Early Valdai Epoch, which corresponds roughly to the end of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 and MIS 4, loess accumulation occurred after completion of development of the Mezin pedocomplex and before the beginning of the Bryansk stage of soil development, i.e., over more than 20 000 years. In the much shorter Late Valdai Cryochron MIS 2 (10 000–12 000 years), loess accumulation reached 5 m. The data evaluation shows that the loess accumulation rates in the Early Valdai Epoch (~0.07 mm/year) and the Late Valdai Epoch (~0.5 mm/year) differ from each other by an order of magnitude.