Sandia Cave Unit X (Haynes Collection) (Pleistocene to of the United States)

Also known as Sandia Layer

Where: Sandoval County, New Mexico (35.3° N, 106.4° W: paleocoordinates 35.3° N, 106.4° W)

• coordinate stated in text

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Late/Upper Pleistocene to Late/Upper Pleistocene (0.1 - 0.0 Ma)

• this unit was thought by Hibben to include "Sandia" (pre-Folsom) artifacts, to be entirely "Late Pleistocene," and to underlie and predate units F and H, but according to Haynes and Agogino 1986 it consists of material reworked "by rodent activity" from units F, H, and J and the "Sandia" artifacts are actually of Folsom age; there are nine 14C dates ranging from "1890+/-90" years B.P. on a "charcoal lump" to "13,700+/-400" on "large animal bone," but the youngest of six dates on bone is "8,520+/-300," so it is possible that none of the fossils are younger than Early Holocene

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: cave; unlithified, shelly/skeletal, brown, conglomeratic siltstone

• "Loose debris... yellowish brown, dust with rodent dung, artifacts, teeth, and fragments of rock, bone, twigs, pinon nuts, and acorns in tunnels in, on, and under ochre and limestone residuum" (Haynes and Agogino 1986)

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: midden

Collected by C. V. Haynes in 1961

Collection methods: quarrying,

Primary reference: F. C. Hibben. 1941. Evidences of early occupation in Sandia Cave, New Mexico, and other sites in the Sandia-Manzano region. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 99(23):1-44 [J. Alroy/J. Alroy]more details

Purpose of describing collection: archaeological analysis

PaleoDB collection 93378: authorized by John Alroy, entered by John Alroy on 16.01.2010

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

• species names are not given, but the material might not have been specifically determinate
Mammalia
 Lagomorpha - Leporidae
Lepus sp. Linnaeus 1758 hare
Sylvilagus sp. Gray 1867 cottontail rabbit
 Rodentia - Cricetidae
Neotoma sp. Say and Ord 1825 pack rat
 Rodentia - Sciuridae
Marmota sp., "Citellus sp." = Spermophilus
Marmota sp. Frisch 1775 marmot
"Citellus sp." = Spermophilus Cuvier 1825 ground squirrel
 Rodentia - Geomyidae
Geomys sp. Rafinesque 1817 pocket gopher
 Carnivora - Mustelidae
Mustelidae indet. Fischer 1817 mustelid carnivore