• Short-faced bear Arctodus simus
• Giant beaver Castoroides ohioensis
• Flat-headed peccary P/a tygonus compressus
• Scott's moose Cervalces scotti
• Toronto deer Torontoceros hypogaeus
• Woodland muskox Bootherium bombifrons
• Wooly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius
• Jefferson mammoth Mammuthus jeffersoni
• American mastodont Mammut americanum

Animals that became extinct in the Great Lakes Basin but that survive in other areas today include the following:

• Grizzly bear Ursus arctos
• Caribou Rangifer tarandus
• Bison Bison
• Barren ground muskox Ovibos  moschatus
• Pika Ochotona
• Greenland collared lemming Dicrostonyx groenlandicus
• Yellow-cheeked vole Microtus xanthognathus
• Heather vole Phenacomys intermedius
• Northern bog lemming Synaptomy borealis

These mammals (with the exception of the bison) are extinct in the area today because they retreated to the north and northwest as the Great Lakes region became increasingly warmer from the end of the Pleistocene through the Holocene.  We have discussed some of the hypotheses for the worldwide extinction of the large herbivorous mammals and their dependent carnivores and scavengers at the end of the Pleistocene.  Actually, any or all of these hypotheses could be either directly or indirectly applied to the Great Lakes region.  Even the out-of-step mating hypothesis could be applied if the big game animals migrated southward to have their young. We have pointed out that each of these hypotheses has its champions.  But another viewpoint is that perhaps all sudden extinctions reflect those odd points in time when several things go wrong at once.  Let’s use the analogy of a major highway accident.  A single factor such as faulty or impaired driving, bad road conditions, bad weather conditions, or a faulty vehicle might result in a close all or a minor accident.  But if all of these factor occurred at once, a major disaster is very likely to occur. 

Perhaps several of the events suggested by the various extinction hypotheses occurred at once at the end of the Pleistocene about 10,000 years ago.  Let us say that (1) the climate changed from equable to inequable, causing many large herbivores to have out-of-step mating, (2) the water table dropped, causing not only a shortage of drinking water but also of essential shallow saline water for mega herbivores, (3) human hunters arrived to confront inexperienced big game herds that already existed in a disharmonious ecological mosaic of species, and (4) new diseases were introduced by species that immigrated across the Bering Straits.  Each of these changes would be especially hard on the large herbivores because of their large demands on the ecosystem as well as their low reproductive rates.  Together, they would have been disastrous.

Humans in the Pleistocene of the Great Lakes Region

Humans lived in Europe and Asia almost a half million years ago, but they did not immigrate to North America until near the end of the Pleistocene, as the last ice sheet was retreating. Traveling humans are believed to have reached the northern part of North America by means of a complete or partial land bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska. They then migrated down through the unglaciated region in Alaska and Canada, through the United States, across the Central American land bridge, and finally, all of the way to the southern tip of South America.

These early Americans were not "cave men," and if they were still around and wore modern clothes, they would not look any different from people of today with similar genetic backgrounds. When these people arrived in the Great Lakes region near the end of the Ice Age, they left some of their spear points and tools behind. The scattered spear points are solid evidence that Paleo-Indian big game hunters dwelled in the region, but the relatively few occupation sites known are thought to have been only briefly inhabited.

Some archaeologists believe that there were few bands of paleohun­ters in the Great Lakes region, but others think they may have been more numerous, considering the number of finds of fluted points in all of the states and provinces in the region. For instance, there are more than 100 records of fluted points in the state of Michigan, and many private collectors have additional specimens, some as many as 30 or more. Other tools of paleohunters include stone hide-scrapers, stone knives, and small pointed tools called gravers used to poke holes in hides.

Michigan fluted points occurred at the same time that mammoths and mastodonts roamed the state in large numbers. Some of the Michi­gan points are called Gainey points and are very similar to the Clovis points of the plains states and southwestern United States that were made by the people who lived there about 11,500 to 11,000 years ago. Some fluted points in other states of the Great Lakes region during the same time interval as above, are generally similar to Gainey and Clovis points. Still other fluted points found in the Great Lakes region are believed to have been perhaps two thousand years younger than the Clovis-like points and to have been used for hunting different kinds of game.

In the plains and Southwest, Clovis points are often found near mam­moth skeletons. One mammoth in Arizona wandered off to die with eight clovis points in its body. This may indicate that several spearmen participated in the hunt. The Clovis-point people camped on ridges and terraces next to rivers and streams where big game came to eat or drink. Scientists have experimented with Clovis points on dead African ele­phants and they have shown that the spears easily could have produced fatal wounds. It has been suggested that Clovis-point people hunted in pairs, and that one person would attract the animal's attention while the other one either hurled a spear at the animal or jabbed it with a spear.

Actually, evidence that mammoths and mastodonts were significantly diminished by paleohunters in the Great Lakes region inconclusive. For instance, there are as yet no sites in either Ontario or Michigan where mammoths or mastodonts are directly associated with any Paleo-Indian fluted points or Stone tools! However, some paleontologist have pointed out that stone tools were not expendable for Paleo-Indian hunters in the Great Lakes region and that both stone tools and Clovis-type spear points were not casually parted with.  This would account for the lack of such objects associated with mammoth or mastodont skeletons.

There are other kinds of evidence that humans killed and ate mastodonts, at least in Michigan.  Evidence presented includes cut marks on mastodont bones believed to have been made when the meat was removed from the dead animal.  Other marks have been found  on the ends of mastodont bones that have been interpreted as having been made when the animals were taken apart during the butchering process.

Still other mastondont bones have been interpreted as having been fire blackened, perhaps indicating that the meat has been cooked and eaten.  It has been suggested that certain mastodont bones taken from the kill itself were used as tools for stripping off hides.  One bone in the tongue skeleton of mastodonts (the stylohyoid bone) is shaped some what like a probe, and some of these bones at mastodont sites appear to have been worn smooth by use.

These assertions have been backed up by the examination of the bone alterations by scanning electron microscopy, which seems to distinguish nonhuman from human alterations.  The microscope shows that the cut marks have a different microscopic appearance that those made by the forces of nature or by the modern tools that were used to dig the fossils out of the ground.

Certain mastodont bones appear to have been broken as if the marrow had been extracted for food, and other important parts of the skeleton are missing, as if they had been carried away.  Recently, materials have been found that have been interpreted as evidence that mastodont meat was cached in mastodont intestines under the ice for storage and that the cached were barked by stones.

Although the evidence is very intriguing, many Michigan archaeologists remain somewhat skeptical, and they will continue to worry until stone tools or spear points are found in association with either mammoth or mastodont burials.  Unfortunately such associations are very rare in the Great Lakes region.

So, the challenge exist.  Somewhere, some absent-minded paleohunter in Michigan or Ontario must have forgotten to retrieve his spear point from his mammoth or mastodont carcass, or perhaps he left a tool or two by the kill. The discovery of such a site will take a lot of the worry out of Michigan and Ontario archaeologists and get a lot of media attention for the discoverer.

Time capsule to the late Pleistocene. Now our time capsule whisks us back 11,000 years to southern Michigan. We alight on a teardrop-shaped hill called a drumlin.  The hill is nearly covered by spruce trees but has a prominent stand of jack pine in an area where lightning started a small fire several years before. At the bottom of the hill is a small, shallow lake surrounded by shrubby willows.

The small lake is fed by a tiny stream that carries saline water from ancient evaporative Silurian rocks brought near the surface by uplift eons ago. Suddenly, some huge, elephant like (but also somewhat pig like) animals crash through the trees. Some of the mastodonts begin eating willow plants, while others drink the mildly salty water, which is sucked up into the trunks and then sprayed into their mouths. Still others spray themselves with water in an attempt to discourage the thousands of deerflies that are pestering them.