A review of Quaternary proboscideans from Alberta, Canada

Here we present a summary of the largest museum collection of Quaternary proboscideans known from Alberta, housed at the Royal Alberta Museum. The 378 specimens reported here come from localities across the province, highlighting the broad distribution of proboscideans in southwestern Canada during the late Pleistocene. Despite the isolated nature of most individual specimen records, the cumulative record provides a broad sense of the chronologic distribution of late Pleistocene proboscideans in a large portion of southwestern Canada. New and summary radiocarbon data indicate that the sparse record of pre-LGM mastodon (Mammut americanum) is limited to >40,700 ± 3000 yr BP, suggesting a pattern of pre-LGM extirpation previously observed at more northern latitudes. Mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) occur in greater numbers and have a more lengthy late Pleistocene record, characterized by a temporal gap related to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).