Blancan Lagomorphs and Rodents of the Deer Park Assemblages, Meade County, Kansas

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2002

Abstract

A new collection of lagomorphs and rodents from the Deer Park B local fauna (l.f.) of Meade County, Kansas is described and compared with other small mammal assemblages of the Meade Basin, including the underlying Deer Park A l.f. Deer Park A was correctly assigned by Hibbard to the Blancan, bridging the gap between earlier Blancan faunas such as Fox Canyon and the late Blancan Sanders l.f. Recent fieldwork indicates that the Deer Park quarries may lie in the Rexroad Formation, rather than in the Ballard Formation as previously assumed. The geology and extinct mammalian contingent at Deer Park suggest that the lower horizon of Deer Park A was an active spring that gradually turned into a marshy environment during Deer Park B time. The rodents of Deer Park B are indicative of an open prairie ecosystem that might have been somewhat more arid than that of southwestern Kansas today.

Journal Title

Journal of Paleontology

Volume

76

Issue

6

First Page

1072

Last Page

1090

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022336000057887

First Department

Biology

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