with the assistance of David Kelley, then a graduate 
student in anthropology at Harvard, he excavated two 
caves, Romero’sand Valenzuela’s, and sampled the refuse 
in a third, Ojo de Agua, all located in Infiernillo Can- 
yon. The earliest corn from these caves proved disap- 
pointingly to be not earlier than the La Perra Cave but 
slightly later, 2300-1800 B.C. It was, however, of a race 
different from the La Perra corn and showed some re- 
semblance to the early prehistoric corn of Bat Cave in 
New Mexico described by Mangelsdorf and Smith 
(1949). We now recognize both as being related to the 
prehistoric wild corn of Tehuacain Valley described by 
Mangelsdorf et al. (1964). 
Of even greater interest was the discovery in the Infier- 
nillo Canyon caves of several specimens each of teosinte, 
the closest relative of maize, and of Tripsacum, a more 
distant relative. The prehistoric remains of these three 
species of the American Maydeae are described below, 
following a brief description of the site and its environs. 
DEscRIPTION OF THE SITE 
The Canyon Infiernillo is located in southwest T'am- 
aulipas in the northern part of the municipio Ocampo. 
In terms of our previous investigations in Sierra de 
‘Tamaulipas (MacNeish, 1958; Mangelsdorf et al., 1956), 
this region is about 75 miles to the southwest and has a 
very different environment. Immediately southwest of 
the dry Sierra de Tamaulipas at an elevation never over 
1500 feet is the wide flat meandering Guayalejo River 
Valley with a tropical vegetation extending up from the 
south. West and southwest of this valley lie the first 
north-south oriented ridges of the Sierra Madre moun- 
tains. The lower slopes of these mountains are covered 
with a tropical, deciduous forest; from 2500 to 4000 feet 
the vegetation forms a cloud forest; and at higher eleva- 
[ 34 | 
