Late Cretaceous to Quaternary Strata and Fossils of Texas: Field Excursions Celebrating 125 Years of GSA and Texas Geology, GSA South-Central Section Meeting, Austin, Texas, April 2013
This volume, prepared in conjunction with the 47th Annual Meeting of the GSA South-Central Section, contains four guides that focus on sedimentology and paleontology in Texas. A theme of exploration threads its way through the trips, all of which can trace their roots to the work of early geologic explorers. One trip retraces part of the 1889 Dumble survey that explored the geology along the Colorado River between Austin and La Grange, Texas, while another takes readers to an internationally famous Quaternary vertebrate paleontology site, studied since the beginning of the twentieth century, inside Friesenhahn Cave in the central Texas Hill Country. Another guide visits Paleocene- to Eocene-age sediments derived from the Rocky Mountains and transported via rivers to the Houston Embayment, building out the continental shelf, while a fourth explores Late Cretaceous Gulf Series strata in the Dallas area.
Friesenhahn Cave: Late Pleistocene paleoecology and predator-prey relationships of mammoths with an extinct scimitar cat
-
Published:January 01, 2013
-
CiteCitation
Russell W. Graham, Ernest L. Lundelius, Jr., Laurence Meissner, Keith Muhlestein, 2013. "Friesenhahn Cave: Late Pleistocene paleoecology and predator-prey relationships of mammoths with an extinct scimitar cat", Late Cretaceous to Quaternary Strata and Fossils of Texas: Field Excursions Celebrating 125 Years of GSA and Texas Geology, GSA South-Central Section Meeting, Austin, Texas, April 2013, Brian B. Hunt, Elizabeth J. Catlos
Download citation file:
- Share
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this trip is to visit an internationally famous Quaternary vertebrate paleontology site, Friesenhahn Cave, on the eastern margin of the Edwards Plateau in the heart of the central Texas Hill Country. This site has a very long history of scientific investigations beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing today. The cave has produced the fossil remains of more than 50 vertebrate taxa, including amphibians, reptiles and mammals. However, the abundant remains of an extinct scimitar cat, Homotherium serum, including juvenile individuals along with hundreds of teeth, cranial, and postcranial elements of juvenile mammoths, Mammuthus cf. M. columbi, make it an especially unique site. Our visit to Friesenhahn Cave will focus on its physical setting, cave sediment stratigraphy, potential age and taphonomy as they relate to the adaptations of Homotherium in the late Pleistocene of central Texas and its relationship to its potential prey, juvenile mammoths. We will also discuss recent studies of the cave itself, and its protection for future investigations by Concordia College.
- absolute age
- assemblages
- Bexar County Texas
- C-14
- carbon
- carbonate rocks
- Carnivora
- cave environment
- caves
- Cenozoic
- Chordata
- Comanchean
- correlation
- Cretaceous
- dates
- Edwards Formation
- Edwards Plateau
- Elephantidae
- Elephantoidea
- Eutheria
- Felidae
- field trips
- Fissipeda
- fossil localities
- isotopes
- limestone
- Lower Cretaceous
- Mammalia
- Mammuthus
- Mesozoic
- paleoecology
- Pleistocene
- Proboscidea
- Quaternary
- radioactive isotopes
- sedimentary rocks
- Smilodon
- stratigraphy
- taphonomy
- terrestrial environment
- Tetrapoda
- Texas
- Theria
- United States
- upper Pleistocene
- Vertebrata
- Friesenhahn Cave
- Homotherium serum