Pleistocene and Holocene records of Antilocapra americana: A review of theFAUNMAP data

FAUNMAP is an electronic database documenting the late Quaternary (Pleistoc ene and Holocene) distribution of mammal species in the United States, deve loped at the Illinois State Museum with support from the National Science F oundation. The primary purpose of the database is to investigate evolution of mammalian communities, although individual species distributions are rea dily examined. With a Geographic Information System (GIS), changes in the d istributions of individual species and their effects upon mammal community composition can be documented for the late Quaternary. As of 1994, it inclu ded data from 2919 sites in the contiguous 48 states covering the last 40,0 00 years. The database is highly incomplete and does not represent the enti re locality distribution of species, primarily because only a select few cu ltural resource ma;management reports were included. The FAUNMAP database w as queried for Antilocapra americana, the sole living representative of a o nce-extensive family of pecoran artiodactyls. GIS maps were generated showi ng the distribution of Antilocapra americana from the Wisconsinan through t he Holocene and the modem extant range. These maps reveal Antilocapra ameri cana has been consistently present throughout what early twentieth century mammalogists consider the species' historic range, with only an occasional locality outside those boundaries. These latter localities can be correlate d with short-term shifts in the distribution of the short-grass prairie eas tern border or slight changes in the western limits of the species range.