The Recognition of Pleistocene Faunas

The Recognition of Pleistocene Faunas is a 1919 Smithsonian paper by Oliver Perry Hay (1846-1930), the American authority on the Ice Age vertebrates of North America. The paper sets out criteria for identifying and correlating Pleistocene faunal assemblages: the diagnostic mammals of the successive glacial and interglacial stages, the problems of mixed and reworked deposits, and the use of extinct species such as the mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, and native horses in dating Quaternary beds. Hay’s three-volume work on the Pleistocene of North America, published by the Carnegie Institution through the 1920s, built on the framework outlined here. The paper is a foundational document of North American Quaternary paleontology and remains of interest to historians of Ice Age science. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.