Late Pleistocene mammoth trackway from Fossil Lake, Oregon

Abstract

Behavior of Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) is revealed by a newly discovered trackway at the Pleistocene locality of Fossil Lake, Oregon. Our 8 by 20 m excavation of the mammoth trackway found 117 tracks, including one 20-m-long adult trail, partial trackways of 3 additional adults, a yearling and a baby all heading generally west. The tracks are in the Marble Bluff biotite tuff (43.2 cal ka), which forms a surface horizon to the Pogani silty clay loam paleosol (Natrargid), with a cracked surface and a columnar-structured, subsurface (Bn) horizon, like soils under desert soda pans with alkali shrubland. Directly below is the Yada silty clay paleosol (Xeroll) with crumb textured surface (A) horizon like grassland soils. The Pasiwa loam (Psamment) is a thin brown siltstone, with sparse roots and burrows of lake-margin early successional vegetation. The Pui sandy loam (Aquent) is well-bedded tuff and sand (A) with subhorizontal calcareous rhizomes and adventitious roots, like those of lake-margin tule reeds (Schoenoplectus acutus). Columbian mammoths may have moved like modern elephants with infants in matriarchal groups through landscapes of sagebrush and grassland, and this trackway includes a limping female attended by concerned juveniles. Grassland paleosols common in the Fossil Lake Formation, are now rare in the same region, perhaps related to extinction of proboscidean and equine grazers.