19361 MAMMALS OP OREGON 329 



Stanley G. Jewett could get no recent reports from the Howard and 

 John Day River country. He was told of a grizzly bear killed near 

 Lookout Mountain, east of Prineville, in 1885, and one seen by some 

 hunters on the head of Badger Creek, northeast of Prineville in 1891. 



URSUS MIRUS MERBIAM 

 SMALL YELLOWSTONE PARK GRIZZLY; SONAHA of the Piute at Burns 



Ursus mirus Merriam, North Amer. Fauna No. 41, p. 40, 1918. 



Type. Collected at Slough Creek, Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., by 

 Henry Anderson, March 27, 1915. 



General characters. Size, medium, much less than Jiorribilis, imperator, 

 klamatliensis, or idahoensis, still somewhat larger than texensis or nelsoni. 

 Skull long, narrow, and flat with light dentition for a grizzly ; posterior upper 

 molar small and triangular with narrow posterior point. Color from life and 

 from a few skins seen in and around Yellowstone Park, dark brown, fading to 

 yellowish brown in summer. 



Measurements. Of type skull : Basal length, 315 mm ; zygomatic breadth, 220 ; 

 interorbital breadth, 77; alveolar length of upper molar series, 75. Measure- 

 ments of skull from bed of Malheur Lake; Basal length, 324; zygomatic 

 breadth, 210 ; interorbital breadth, 78 ; alveolar length of upper molar series, 77. 



Distribution and habitat. The only specimen of this small brown 

 grizzly from Oregon is a skull picked up on the dry bed of Malheur 

 Lake on October 15, 1930, by Frank and Mack Thompson, and given 

 to G. N. Jameson, of Burns, Oreg. (fig. 80). Jameson kindly lent it 

 to the Biological Survey for comparison and identification but 

 wished to keep it in a local museum, of Harney County material at 

 Burns as a representative of the animal life once indigenous to the 

 Malheur Valley. Later, however, through the efforts of Merriam, 

 and with Thompson's consent, it was acquired by the United States 

 National Museum as a part of the Biological Survey collection. 



The skull was found on the dry bed of Malheur Lake a few miles 

 south of Lawn and east of the mouth of the Silvies River, about a 

 mile from the shore line. During the summer of 1930 the water of 

 the lake receded for several miles from shore, leaving exposed many 

 old skulls of buffalo and some elk, as well as this bear skull. All are 

 in a fairly good state of preservation but show evidence of age and 

 loss of some of the mineral matter of the bones but no deposit of 

 silica or evidence of petrifaction. The bones are brittle and the thin 

 edges are somewhat eroded or receding, but otherwise the skulls are 

 quite normal. 



The written history of this valley goes back for more than 100 

 years, and it is probable that the skulls of the buffalo in the lake all 

 date still further back. This grizzly skull shows evidence of about 

 the same antiquity and may be a contemporary of the bison in the 

 tragedies of the lake bed. In fact its presence there may have some 

 relation to the buffalo also trapped in the oozy mud of the lake 

 bottom. 



While far from the previously known range of Ursus mirus this 

 specimen suggests a very logical range for the species from the 

 lower levels of the Yellowstone Park country down the Snake River 

 Valley over southern Idaho, and the lava-bed country of eastern 

 Oregon. It seems highly probable that old records of grizzlies in 

 the gorges of Steens Mountains are referable to this species. Up to 



