WATERFOWL In THE PREHISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

The paleontological and archaeological records of waterfowl have provided extensive evidence of a sixty million year prehistory of the Order Anseriformes. The distinctive shapes of the skulls and many of the limb bones have enabled recognition of this group in many paleofaunas of the Cenozoic Era, especially in North America. Abundant and useful, waterfowl have had a long association with human populations as well, especially in South Dakota. We compiled an extensive bibliography and examined a number of actual specimens in order to provide this review of waterfowl prehistory, focused on South Dakota. The earliest waterfowl, related to the Anseranatidae (Magpie Geese), are fossils from the earliest Paleocene. They are found in sediments laid down shortly after the extinction event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Later fossils attributed to waterfowl have been reported from Eocene sediments in Wyoming and from Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene rocks in South Dakota. One bone of a duck was recovered from the Late Pleistocene Lange-Ferguson Site (Shannon County), a mammoth kill attributed to early humans. Archaeological sites of the Missouri Basin dam salvage projects produced waterfowl bones, demonstrating that the Arikara and other cultures made use of at least thirteen species of swans, geese, and ducks. Other sites in South Dakota, notably the Black Hills, have yielded isolated records of various species, notably of goose and teal species. Explorer accounts and ethnographic descriptions supplemented these records, confirming the venerable cultural associations of waterfowl in this region.