University of Kansas
Lawrence
1969
University of Kansas Publications, Museum of Natural History
Editors of this number: Frank B. Cross, Philip S. Humphrey, J. Knox Jones, Jr.
Volume 18, No. 5, pp. 421-504
Published August 20, 1969
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas
PRINTED BY
ROBERT R. (BOB) SANDERS, STATE PRINTER
TOPEKA, KANSAS
1969
32-6879
Centuries ago in southwestern Colorado the prehistoric Pueblo inhabitants of the Mesa Verde region expressed their interest in mammals by painting silhouettes of them on pottery and on the walls of kivas. Pottery occasionally was made in the stylized form of animals such as the mountain sheep. The silhouettes of sheep and deer persist as pictographs or petroglyphs on walls of kivas and on rocks near prehistoric dwellings. Mammalian bones from archeological sites reveal that the fauna of Mesa Verde was much the same in A. D. 1200, when the Pueblo Indians were building their magnificent cliff dwellings, as it is today. One of the native mammals is the ubiquitous deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus. The geographic range of this species includes most of the United States, and large parts of Mexico and Canada.