PLEISTOCENE MEGAFAUNA REMAINS (ARCHAEOLOGICAL VS. PALEONTOLOGICAL) AND PALEOINDIAN PREY CHOICE IN OKLAHOMA

The extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna (Pleistocene-age mammals exceeding 45 kilograms adult body mass) of North America has been hotly debated for much of the last 100 years. Hypothesized causes for the extinction include overhunting, climate change, and other fringe hypotheses (such as comet impact, disease, or solar activity). Roughly half of all extinct genera in North America lived alongside humans, according to researchers such as Grayson and Meltzer (2015). Of those contemporaneous genera, there is direct evidence of hunting by humans of only a few taxa (especially mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, bison, camels, and horses). This study reviews previously published data on megafauna fossils. The focus is on the fossil remains of archaeological and paleontological sites in Oklahoma. This is a review of which megafauna taxa were present in Oklahoma during the Pleistocene (based on the list in Grayson and Meltzer 2015) and which of those taxa were hunted by humans. There is clear evidence of the hunting of few megafauna taxa (mainly mammoths and bison) in Oklahoma, with no evidence of the hunting of other taxa (ground sloths, musk oxen, etc.). The fossil evidence suggests that the cause of the Pleistocene extinction was more environmental in nature, and that humans were not the sole cause of the extinction (at least in this part of the United States).