Turner, Ronald W. 1974. Mammals of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. University of Kansas, Lawrence. Miscellaneous Publication No. 60. 178 p.

Abstract

The principal purposes of this report are: 10 to delimit and describe the mammalian fauna of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming as a natural zoogeographic unit; 2) to describe the autecology and distributional patterns of each mammalian species in the Hills; 3) to discuss the geographic variation and inferred speciation of these mammals; and 4) to analyze and interpret the probably biogeographic affinities of various species in light of proposed changes in late Pleistocene and Holocene environments. Thus, this study represents a synthesis of systematic, zoogeographic, ecologic, and historic factors and their bearing on the contemporary mammalian fauna of the Black Hills.

The Recent Black Hills mammalian fauna comprises 62 species in 44 genera and six orders. Three of the species have been extirpated by man and subsequently reintroduced to the Black Hills from other areas. Four other species are adventives; of these, two were introduced from North America and two from outside North America. Also included in the accounts are 25 species whose occurrence in the Black Hills is questionable or undocumented at present.