Analysis Of Fossil Salamanders From Cheek Bend Cave, Maury County, Tennessee

In 1978 archaeologists from the University of Tennesse at Knoxville discovered a late Pleistocene-Holocene [approximately 16,000 YBP (Years Before Present) to Modern] fossil bearing deposit in Cheek Bend Cave (CBC), Maury County, Tennessee. This deposit yielded some aboriginal artifacts and thousands of vertebrate remains, which were mostly small mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles and amphibians. Insectivores (18,000 bones) and bats (50,000 bones) comprised most of the collection (Klippel and Parmalee, 1982a). Preliminary sorting identified nearly 2,000 fossils as salamanders. This collection apparently represented one of the largest non-contemporaneous salamander paleofaunas to date. The purpose of this thesis was to describe, analyze, and interpret the fossils.