A PARTIAL BISON (BISON CF B-LATIFRONS) SKELETON FROM CHUCHI-LAKE, ANDITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MIDDLE WISCONSINAN ENVIRONMENT OF CENTRAL BRITISH-COLUMBIA

Fragmentary but massive left and right horncores, found with eight pos tcranial bones, from a clay unit underlying a diamicton of the last (F raser) glaciation at Chuchi Lake, British Columbia probably represents an individual giant bison (Bison cf. B. latifrons): A sample of bone from one of the horncores yielded an accelerator mass spectrometry (AM S) radiocarbon date of 30 740 +/- 220 BP, whereas overlapping dates fr om two other laboratories on an associated humerus are 34 800 +/- 420 BP and 35 480 +/- 1080 BP. Despite the discrepancy between horncore an d humerus dates, they are in accord with the suspected stratigraphic a ge of the clay unit whence they came. Analysis of pollen from that cla y unit indicates that bison with massive horns once occupied an open f orest in the vicinity. Probably giant bison and Columbian mammoths (in corporating paleoenvironmental evidence found with the nearby, penecon temporaneous Babine Lake mammoth) shared lake-dotted open forest to sh rub tundra range in what is now central British Columbia toward the cl ose of the Middle Wisconsinan (Olympia Nonglacial Interval). The Chuch i Lake specimen is important because it is the first indication of gia nt bison from British Columbia, and it appears to be one of the latest known survivors of this species.