Late Pleistocene Geology and Fauna of the Wally’s Beach Site (DhPg-8) Alberta, Canada

Revisiting Paleoindian exploitation of extinct North American mammals

“…Located in southeastern Alberta, Wally's Beach has provided a rich late Pleistocene faunal record, 550 from the skeletal remains of Equus, Camelops, and Bootherium to the remarkably well-preserved tracks 551 of camel, horse, mammoth, and other large mammals (McNeil et al 2004(McNeil et al , 2005(McNeil et al , 2007. 552…”

“…Kooyman et al (2006) report finding 578 use wear on top of the abraded surfaces, and suggest that this sequence results from the use of tools 579 cached at the site. Still, we are puzzled how wind could have abraded the surfaces of stone tools yet left 580 bone surfaces unscathed and the tracks of horse, camel, mammoth, and other large mammals intact 581 (McNeil et al 2004(McNeil et al , 2005(McNeil et al , 2007, all in an area in which wind speeds today can reach 160 km/h 582 (Kooyman et al 2001). Different taphonomic histories of artifacts and bones seem suggested by this.…”

Glacial kettles as archives of early human settlement along the Northern Rocky Mountain Front

“…Wedge-shaped microcores that could relate to the Beringian tradition, in particular a southern movement of people of the Denali complex, have only been found to postdate 13,000 cal yr BP (Wilson et al, 2011;Magne et al, 2020). Ironically, the earliest occupation in the region (and with the best chronological resolution), the kill site at Wally's Beach, does not contain projectile points in situ (McNeil et al, 2004;Kooyman et al, 2006Kooyman et al, , 2012, and its cultural attribution is disputed (Waters et al, 2015). During the Late Paleoindian and Early Archaic, projectile point types are often defined at an eponymous site and rarely identified elsewhere, making intra-or interregional comparisons difficult (Peck, 2011).…”

“…While deposits on interfluves along the Northern Front have been stable through much of the postglacial (Waters and Rutter, 1984), early archaeological sites so far have been found either in thin deposits as low-resolution palimpsests (e.g., Gryba, 1983) or redeposited on the surface through deflation or colluviation (e.g., McNeil et al, 2004;Kooyman et al, 2006). There are no cave archaeological deposits in the Northern Front, and they are rare throughout the ice-free corridor, with the exception of Charlie Lake Cave (Fladmark et al, 1988).…”

Late Pleistocene northward-dispersing Bison antiquus from the Bighill Creek Formation, Gallelli Gravel Pit, Alberta, Canada, and the fate of Bison occidentalis

“…Reidentification of the Cochrane and Calgary material places B. antiquus on the Canadian plains between 11.5 and 10.0 ka BP (Wilson and Churcher 1984). The Wally's Beach site (DhPg-8), an archaeological and paleontological locality on St. Mary Reservoir, southern Alberta, has yielded a similar fauna to that of the BCF, dated between 11.4 and 10.9 ka BP, with bones of Equus conversidens, B. antiquus, Rangifer tarandus, and Bootherium bombifrons (Harlan's muskox), as well as trackways of mammoth, camel, and horse (Kooyman et al 2001;McNeil et al 2004). A partial skull from Wally's Beach is nearly as large as the older Gallelli Pit specimen and appears closely similar; it is also identified as B. antiquus and has been dated to 11 130 ± 90 14 C years BP (Tolman 2001).…”