A Glimpse of 11,000-Year Old Inhabitants of Alberta

The St. Mary Dam, completed in 1950, recently required modification of its spillway. This resulted in lowering of water levels in the reservoir by about 10 metres. This allowed wind action to erode exposed late Pleistocene and Holocene sediments. Shayne Tolman visited the site with two of his sons, found a projectile point that stimulated his interest and resulted in his finding several paleoindian points and an extinct bison.

Subsequent work has recovered a large late Pleistocene fauna, including tracks of mammoth, horse, camel and caribou and remains of horse, bison, caribou, canids, ground squirrels, badger, beaver and a number of as yet unidentified species.

The site is unique in a number of ways; 1) all tracks come from the same horizon, indicating contemporaneity of the fauna; 2) the tracks require a unique set of circumstances for their preservation; 3) this represents a faunally very rich site, which, based on associated human artifacts, includes man; 4) the site has been Carbon 14 dated between 11,000 and 11,350; and 5) this is the oldest well-dated archaeological site in Alberta and is the second oldest in Canada.