Monthly Archives: January 2017

January 12, 2017, Presentation and Noon Luncheon at the Salmon Grange

Allen Marquette Presents:  

“EXPLORING THE ICE AGE ANIMALS AND CLIMATE OF THE SALMON AREA

AND CENTRAL IDAHO  10,000 TO 100,000 YEARS AGO”shutterstock_189884369-for-website

Exploring and hiking the beautiful valleys and mountains around the Salmon area today can be rewarding.  However, the same hike 12,000 years ago would have been a very different story!  Seeing mammoths grazing along the Salmon River and mastodons browsing along the upper foothills would have been a common site. From the rock shelters, butcher sites and primitive stone tools found in the area and other places in Central Idaho, we know there were also nomadic hunters and gatherers following and harvesting these animals using primitive spears and atlatls. 

Predators at the end of the last great ice age included saber tooth cats the size of modern tigers and the American lion which weighed nearly twice what the modern African Lion weighs! The American Lion was 12 feet long from nose to tail tip and had retractable claws allowing them to climb trees!  Last but not least, the amazing, Giant Short Faced Bear was the apex predator of the time and much larger than the largest grizzly bear living today. 

If you would like to see and touch some of the skulls, teeth, bones and claws of these amazing animals, please join us for a journey back in time to Central Idaho during the Last Great Ice Age!