Mammals of the Elm Creek Local Fauna, Late Pleistocene of Beaver County, Oklahoma

Twelve mammalian taxa are identified (four to genus only) from the 11,410-year-old Elm Creek local fauna. The water shrew Sorex palustris probably lived along margins of cold water streams of glacial meltwater. The chipmunk, Tamias striatus, probably inhabited broad-leafed woodlands marginal to the cold water streams. Other small mammals of the fauna are typical prairie or grassland forms. The ground squirrel, Spermophilus franklinii, is now found to the north and west of Elm Creek. Remains of mammoth, horse and camel were recorded. The small mammals that lived at Elm Creek ca. 11,000 years ago principally were prairie forms. The boreal forest mammals recorded from northern Kansas and Nebraska at about this time did not extend as far south as the Oklahoma Panhandle in the terminal Pleistocene. A summary of eight late Pleistocene local faunas from Meade County, Kansas, and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas show cool-prairie environment, not cold climate or coniferous forest.