A Fossil and Zooarchaeological History of the Gopher Tortoise (Gopher polyphemus) in the Southeastern United States

Abstract

Specimens of fossil gopher tortoises (Gopherus) were collected from five late Pliocene, two early Pleistocene, five middle Pleistocene, and 52 late Pleistocene sites in 18 counties in Florida, one county in Georgia, three in South Carolina, and one in Mississippi. Occurrences of fossil Gopherus polyphemus in Lowndes County, Mississippi, and Charleston, Colleton, and Horry counties, South Carolina, represent extralimital records outside the current geographic range of the species. The extensive fossil record indicates G. polyphemus has been part of the xeric-adapted fauna of the southeastern coastal plain for at least two million years. The majority of the Florida records are from Alachua and Marion counties. This concentration corresponds to the high frequency of late Pleistocene fossil deposits in solution features associated with limestone quarries at Arredondo, Haile, and Reddick. A query of 609 sites in the zooarchaeological database of the Environmental Archaeology laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History was made to determine the presence of G. polyphemus in 67 archaeological sites from the southeastern United States dating from the latest Pleistocene to the late 19th century. The zooarchaeology collections are heavily weighted in favor of sites from Florida and Georgia. These data are not all inclusive of sites from the Southeast, but present a representative record of the association of this species with humans for nearly 12,000 years. Specimens of G. polyphemus from archeological sites are known from 20 Florida counties and one in Georgia.