Ore Bin / Oregon Geology Magazine / Journal
State of Oregon The ORE BIN Department of Geology Volume 35, No.8 and Mineral Industries 1069 State Office Bldg. August 1973 Portland Oregon 97201 FOSSIL BIGHORN SHEEP FROM LAKE COUNTY, OREGON Richard E. Thoms* and Harold Cramer Smith** In the first week of October, 1972, Roy Collier, a bulldozer operator for the MC ranch at Adel, Oregon, bull dozed up a skull from the gravel s near the mouth of Twentymile Creek. The locality is in the South Warner Valley, Lake County, Oregon, in the Nwi, sec. 19, T. 40 S., R. 24 E., W. B. & M. Subsequent examination of the skull indicated that it represents a specimen of Ovis catclawensis Hibbard and Wright, an extinct Pleistocene species of bighorn sheep known only from the Great Basin. A "battered cobble" of basalt, possibly representing human occupation of the stream bank or its vicinity, was found in association with the skull. Pre v i 0 u sSt u die son F 0 s s i I and L i v i n g Big h 0 r n. She e p Fro m Nor t h Am e ric a For a thorough treatment of the various studies which have been made on the descriptions, distributional patterns, and evolution of fossil and recent bighorn sheep in North America, the reader is referred to the paper by Stokes and Condie (1961). The following section, a review of the his torical record of bighorn sheep in the Oregon country, is offered for the reader to better understand the rugged and limited conditions under which the modern analog of Ovis catclawensis now survives in a portion of the Great Basin.
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