Late Pleistocene vertebrates from Three-Forks Cave, Adair County, Oklahoma Ozark Highland

We report on an assemblage of vertebrate fossils from a limestone cave in the southwestern portion of the Ozark Highlands. The fauna includes several extinct, large-bodied mammalian taxa including Megalonyx jeffersonii (Jefferson’s ground sloth), Canis dirus (dire wolf), Arctodus simus (short-faced bear; two individuals), and Equidae (extinct horses), which indicate a late Pleistocene age. In addition, there is a variety of extant vertebrates including a fish, Aplodinotus cf. grunniens (freshwater drum), unidentified Anura (frogs and toads) and Caudata (salamanders), Terrapene sp. (box turtles), cf. Ophisaurus (legless lizards), Colubroidea and Crotalidae (non-venomous snakes and pit vipers), Bubo virginianus (great horned owl), and at least 12 other mammals: Sorex sp. (long-tailed shrews), Perimyotis subflavus (tricolored bat), Eptesicus fuscus (big brown bat), Myotis grisescens (gray myotis), possibly other species of Myotis, Vulpini (foxes), several rodents, Geomys sp. (pocket gophers), Chaetodipus or Perognathus (pocket mice), Peromyscini (native mice), Neotoma cf. floridana (eastern wood rat), Microtus cf. ochrogaster (prairie vole), and, Sylvilagus sp. (cottontail rabbits). An earlier report provided a tentative age of one of the Arctodus simus of about 34,000 years ago (late Pleistocene, Rancholabrean). Among the 23 taxa in the Three-Forks Cave assemblage, two species are added to the Oklahoma Ozark Highland paleofauna: freshwater drum and great horned owl. One extralimital taxon, the pocket mouse Chaetodipus or Perognathus, is present in the assemblage. Numerous remains of juvenile bats of Myotis grisescens and Eptesicus fuscus provide evidence that these species used Three-Forks Cave as a maternity site. Large crater-like pits in the floor of Three-Forks Cave and other caves in the vicinity may represent ancient and modern beds of the short-faced bear and black bear, respectively.

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