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Title: Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado

Author: Sydney Anderson

Release Date: February 15, 2010 [EBook #31280]

Language: English

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UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Volume 9, No. 16, pp. 405-414, 1 fig.
May 20, 1959

Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado

BY

SYDNEY ANDERSON

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
LAWRENCE
1959

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch,
Robert W. Wilson

Volume 9, No. 16, pp. 405-414, 1 fig.
Published May 20, 1959

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Lawrence, Kansas

PRINTED IN
THE STATE PRINTING PLANT
TOPEKA, KANSAS
1959

27-7472

Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado

BY

SYDNEY ANDERSON

The Grand Mesa of Colorado is a westward extension of the mountains of
central Colorado, standing more than five thousand feet above the
valleys of the Colorado and the Gunnison rivers. To certain montane
mammals the mesa is a peninsula of cool, moist, forest surrounded by
inhospitable, hot, dry, barren lowland.

Few mammals previously have been preserved or reported from the Grand
Mesa. Of the species here reported, Warren (1942, The Mammals of
Colorado, Univ. Oklahoma Press) mentioned only four from the counties
in which the Grand Mesa is located. Twenty-two species are here
recorded from the Grand Mesa, and two localities below the rim of the
Mesa on the north slope, on the basis of specimens preserved, and five
additional species on the basis of observations. Many of these species
are limited to a montane habitat or find their optimum conditions
there. The known geographic ranges of some subspecies are extended
westward.

Specimens and notes were obtained by members of a field party from the
Museum of Natural History led by Dr. Harrison B. Tordoff. The party,
including also R. Gordon