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The Lower Colorado River Valley: A Pleistocene Desert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Kenneth L. Cole
Kenneth L. Cole*
Affiliation:
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, 1100 North Mineral Springs Road, Porter, Indiana 46304 USA
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Abstract

A chronological sequence of plant macrofossil assemblages from twenty-five pack rat middens provides a record of desert scrub vegetation for most of the last 13,380 yr B.P. from a hyperarid portion of the lower Colorado River Valley. At the end of the late Wisconsin, and probably during much of the Quaternary, the Picacho Peak area, Imperial County, California, supported a typical Mohave Desert association of Larrea divaricata (creosote bush), Coleogyne ramosissima (blackbrush), Yucca brevifolia (Joshua tree), and Y. whipplei (Whipple yucca). Recent arrivals of Sonoran Desert plants such as Olneya tesota (ironwood) and Fouquieria splendens (ocotillo) suggest that the area supported relatively modern Sonoran desert scrub species for relatively short periods during interglaciations.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , May 1986 , pp. 392 - 400
Copyright
University of Washington

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