Age. The marmot presumably is Late Wisconsin in age.
General Description. Tularosa Cave (actually a rock shelter) is primarily an archaeological site that apparently hit a very small amount of earlier material.
Discussion. Stearns (1942) cited Lyon (1907) as reporting the fauna, with marmot represented by a single skull fragment. Stearns cites the archaeologist, Walter Hough (1914), as the material having been retrieved from a debris midden behind the archaeological ruins. Most of the fauna is Upper Sonoran and was reevaluated by Heller (1976); the non-marmot material is assumed to be Holocene and is not listed here.
Fauna.
Marmota flaviventris—Yellow-bellied Marmot (Stearns 1942)
Literature. Harris 1993c; Heller 1976; Hough 1907; Howell 1915; Lyon 1907; Stearns 1942.
Last Update: 1 Nov 2008