Response of Individual Mammal Species to Late Quaternary Environmental Fluctuations

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Drs. Russell Graham (Illinois State Museum) and Ernest Lundelius (Texas Memorial Museum) propose to construct a database of late Ice Age Fossil mammals from the United States. Data on species identities, age, rock types, preservation, and paleonenvironmental data will be compiled from literature sources and museum collections, and will be entered into the Illinois State Museum's Geographic Information System. Ten regional coordinators (plus four Canadians working on a similar project) will review the data quality and will participate in yearly workshops to oversee the project. Once established, the proposed database will have tremendous impact in vertebrate paleontology, paleoecology, and the critical fields relating to the Global Change Initiative, such as climate dynamics, conservation biology, and ecological responses to climatic change. This database will be available to a wide variety of investigators who will come to rely on it as a taxonomic resource, as a test for climate models, and as a growing resource for interdisciplinary research.