Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: Few records of Pleistocene saber-toothed cats have been found in Oklahoma.In 1997, an isolated tooth of a saber-toothed cat was found in association with several dental and postcranial skeletal elements of a mammoth in northwestern Oklahoma.These specimens represent only the second record of Smilodon fatalis and the first association of this species with Mammuthus columbi in Oklahoma.The site in which these fossils occurred was discovered by L. Anderson in October 1997, on the shore of Canton Lake in Blaine County (Oklahoma Museum of Natural History [OMNH] locality V1085; T19N, R13W, sec.18).Bones were exposed at the site by the erosion of the lake bank, probably due to wave action during high winds.The bones occurred at the base of a bank, 2 m high, that was eroded to a vertical face.Approximately the basal half of the exposure consists of Permian red beds of the Dog Creek and/or Marlow Formations (1).The vertebrate fossils occurred in a small deposit of Quaternary age that unconformably overlies Permian beds and incorporates clasts of sand, silt, and clay derived from the Permian beds.The Quaternary deposit may represent the third terrace of the North Canadian River (R. Burkhalter, written comm.),which in Blaine County is thought to reflect the Illinoian glacial stage (1).A modern, grass-covered soil horizon overlies the fossil deposit.Shells of small, freshwater gastropods occurred in a green-gray clay within the bone-bearing deposit.Although no radiometric dates are available for the Canton Lake deposit, similar deposits and lacustrine beds in northwestern Oklahoma typically date to the late Pleistocene (D.G. Wyckoff, pers.comm.) and frequently contain vertebrate fossils from the Rancholabrean land mammal age.
Author: Cynthia L. Gordon
Language: English
Subfield: Paleontology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Funder: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
OpenAlex ID: W2117816855