QUATERNARY PALEONTLOGY OF MEGAMAMMALS FROM NATIONAL PARK UNITS OF THE COLORADO PLATEAU AND CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA

More than two decades of field research of National Park Service (NPS) units on the Colorado Plateau (and adjacent areas) have revealed numerous Plesitocene paleontological resources. Skeletal remains and trace fossils (dung and hair) have provided abundant localities of mammoth (Mammuthus), shrub ox (Euceratherium), Mountain goat (Oreamnos), bison (Bison), camel (Camelops), sloths (Nothrotheriops, Paramylodon, Megatherium), and the rare tapir (Tapirus). some paleontological localities correlate with ancient rock art sites, depicting some of the extinct fauna.The relative abundance of paleontological sites argues against the archaeological theory that there were no Paleoindians on the colorado Plateau because there was no large animal game base. Similarly, a decade of research within the Channel Islands National Park (CHIS), California has produced one nearly complete skeleton of a pygmy mammoth (Mammuthus exilis), and more than 200 additional localities of isolate remains, inclding the less frequent remains of the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). Radiocarbon dates on mammoth bone and charcoal provide evidence of temporal overlap for pygmy mammoths and the earliest human remains on Santa Rosa Island.