PLEISTOCEXE ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY 



38J 



1956). Drury (pp. 86-87) believed that fossil peat and muck deposits 

 resembling those of Alaska are absent from the unglaciated east. It 

 would appear, however, that serious search for ancient boreal forest 

 landforms has not been made in the latitude formerly occupied by 

 this vegetation type (Fig. 2). The famous buried soil of Spartans- 

 burg, South Carolina (Cain, 1944), might possibly represent such a 



BOREAL FORES T ^f^fii^ 2 p 

 .'DECIDUOUS FOREST 



FULL-GLACIAL 

 18,000 B.P. 



POLLEN PROFILES 



1. Marsh, Po. 



2. Slngletory Lake, N,C. 



Fig. 2. Vegetation zones during the Full-glacial of the late Wisconsin. 

 Tundra and taiga are mapped as a single zone with no attempt to dis- 

 tinguish them. Shelf exposure following sea level depression permitted 

 some extension of vegetation beyond the present coast line. 



feature, lying at the southern margin of the Full-glacial boreal forest. 

 In addition to some hickory and oak these soils contain high per- 

 centages of spruce, jack pine, and fir pollen. ^ 



Vertebrate fossils may provide some independent support to the 

 existence of a narrow Full-glacial tundra zone. While uncritical ac- 

 ceptance of large mammals as climatic indicators is to be avoided, 



' D. R. Whitehead (personal correspondence) is presently analyzing pollen from these 

 soils and thinks that they are more likely Interglacial than Full-glacial. He reports 

 finding less spruce and fir than Cain (1944) encountered. 



