Colorado Folsom Point in the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy

Figure One - Side B of 1.3 inch long Colorado Folsom projectile point. Do you notice
anything odd about the flute? John Bradford Branney Collection. 

Folsom artifacts have fascinated me for most of my life. I remember getting the iconic book Indian Artifacts by Virgil Russell for Christmas in the 1960s and seeing some of the magnificent Folsom points in Russell's collection. Ever since that time, I have been hooked on everything about the mysterious Folsom Paleoindian culture. What I discovered was that they don't call it the mysterious Folsom Paleoindian culture for nothing. Beyond the artifacts we rarely find and a few archaeological writeups on Folsom campsites and kill sites, there is very little known about the people who made Folsom projectile points. That was one reason why I wrote my historical fiction book series about the Folsom Paleoindian culture titled the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy. Feeling deprived after reading the scant information on Folsom, I let my imagination run wild. I wanted the Folsom Paleoindian culture to come alive on the pages of my books!   

Figure Two - The Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy book series where 
the Folsom Paleoindian culture comes alive!      

Figure one is a photograph of one of the Folsom projectile points in my extensive Folsom collection. Barbara Johnson surface found this Folsom projectile point on private land in the San Luis Valley of Colorado in 1958. Mrs. Johnson came from a long line of Colorado artifact hunters. Her parents were avid artifact collectors and her grandparents were Rosco Dennis Mutz and Norma Starr Mutz. The artifact community knew Rosco Dennis as Dennis or R.D. Mutz. Mr. Mutz and his family collected one of Colorado’s premier artifact collections at the time. R.D. Mutz died in 1966 at Fowler, Colorado where he had been postmaster for several decades.

Figure Three - Cross-section of the Folsom projectile point 
in figure one, looking up from the proximal end.
Note how thin and flat this projectile point is.
Thinness was an all-important attribute
to Folsom flintknappers.  

The photograph in figure one is the Side B of the 1.3 inch-long Folsom projectile point made from what appears to be Black Forest silicified wood from the Colorado Front Range. When the Paleoindian flint knapper made this particular fluted projectile point, he or she did not follow the usual Folsom flintknapping process. Before I spill the beans on what the flintknapper did, I ask if you see anything unusual about the fluting on Side B of this projectile point? Look real close, now. 

Based on the morphology of this Folsom projectile point, I believe it began life as a thin, rectangular-shaped flake, not much longer than its current length. I am sure by now that a few of you noticed that the Folsom flintknapper fluted Side B from the distal end (tip) down toward the base and not from the proximal end (base) up as normally done. The fluting scar originates at the tip of the projectile point and stops prior to reaching the base. Another way to tell the direction of the fluting is to note the direction of the percussion ripple scars. They ripple like waves in the direction that the flintknapper drove the flute. In this case, the flute direction was from the distal end to the proximal end of the projectile point. This indicates that the flute striking platform was on the distal end of the flake. 

The Folsom flintknapper then created the point or tip by pressure flaking. He or she indented and thinned the proximal end with vertical pressure flakes and finished the marginal edges of the point with an extra-fine pressure retouch. Voila! The perfect Folsom projectile point.   

Figure Four  - Side A of the 1.3 inch long Colorado Folsom projectile point, showing
the original flake surface. John Bradford Branney Collection.  

Figure four is Side A of the same Colorado Folsom projectile point. In my opinion, Side A is the original surface from the flake. In other words, the Folsom flintknapper did not need to flute this side because it was already acceptably flat. Without fluting, this projectile point met the Folsom criteria for thinness. Next, the Folsom flintknapper used fine pressure flaking around the perimeter and called the projectile point good. This Folsom projectile point is < 2 millimeters thick within the flute channel. Folsom projectile points did not get much thinner than this.

An ethical artifact collector always documents his or her finds so the detailed provenance information can be passed down from generation to generation. One of the high points of this Folsom projectile point is the documentation done by the artifact finder, Barbara D. Johnson. This was one of the main reasons I acquired this projectile point for my collection. She wrote and notarized a legal affidavit explaining her family background and where she found the Folsom projectile point, ensuring me that it came from private property. 

This Folsom projectile point also has two legitimate Certificates of Authenticity (COA). Note that I wrote legitimate Certificates of Authenticity. There are a lot of illegitimate artifact authenticators and bogus Certificates of Authenticity in our hobby, and only a few legitimate ones. In my opinion, most authenticators don't know their thumbs from their big toes when it comes to artifacts, especially in the High Plains region. A word to the wise; just because an artifact has a Certificate of Authenticity does not make the artifact authentic! There are lots of fake artifacts out there with illegitimate Certificates of Authenticity (COA)!   

This Folsom projectile point came with two fine and legitimate Certificates of Authenticity;  the first COA came from Jeb Taylor and the second COA came from Bob Knowlton. Both men know their artifacts in the High Plains region. In his COA, Jeb stated that the Folsom point was “made on a flake where the original dorsal and ventral surfaces were utilized as flutes. This point was probably not much large than it is now.” On the second COA, authenticator Bob Knowlton wrote, “An interesting Folsom as it was made on a flake and must have been too thin to flute from the bottom, so it was fluted from the tip on Side B – then cleaned and basally thinned from the bottom. It has had one resharpening."

What are my conclusions? First, not all Folsom projectile points were created equally or using the same method. This particular Folsom projectile point was crafted on a flake and fluted from a direction not expected. Second, sometimes we think we know what is going on with a particular artifact until different eyes have a look and see things we never even imagined. 

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. He held various positions in the energy industry during his thirty-four-year career before he took up writing full-time. John has published eleven books and many magazine articles on prehistoric America and life in general. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa, three German Shepherds, and an ex-feral cat.

Read the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy for More About American Lions!



Click to Order Winds of Eden

 When I was doing my research for the third book of the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy called Winds of Eden I wanted to find a new Pleistocene animal predator to put in the book. If you have read the first two books of the trilogy, Shadows on the Trail and Ghosts of the Heart, you know that there were several animal predators making life more difficult for the Folsom People. For the finale of the trilogy, Winds of Eden, I wanted to find the 'animal predator of predators' and I think I was successful. The link below takes you to an article about the American Lion, one of the largest and most dangerous animal predators of the Pleistocene. Some of the highlights from the article: 

• The American Lion first appears in the fossil record about 1.8

  

  Skeleton of the American Lion.

  million years ago.  
• About one hundred complete skeletons of the American Lion have been found preserved in the La Brea tar pits in California. Other fossils have been found in Canada, Texas, Idaho, Nevada, Nebraska, Wyoming, Mississippi, northern Florida, Mexico, and Peru.   
• These skeletons show that it was about 30 percent larger than today's African Lion, measuring about 10 feet long, 4 feet high at the shoulder, and weighing about 750 pounds.
•  The number of male and female found next to prey animals in the La Brea tar pits is roughly equal, however, indicating that unlike modern lions, in which the females do all the hunting, the American Lion hunted in male-female pairs or small groups.
• Modern lions are ambush hunters that carefully stalk their prey and then make a sudden rush. The American Lion, with its longer legs and its more powerful skull and jaws, may have been a better runner, pursuing its prey over longer distances.
• Joseph Leidy, the Philadelphia paleontologist who first described the species in 1852, from a jawbone found in Mississippi, considered it to be a distinct species of lion, and named it Felis atrox (later placed in the genus Panthera).
• Over time, other authorities argued that the American Lion was a subspecies of the African Lion, and named it Panthera leo atrox.
• In 2010 another study by Danish and American scientists concluded that while the American Lion was its own distinct species, the skull had more traits in common with the jaguar than with lions, and concluded that Panthera atrox should be called the Giant Jaguar instead.

Click to Learn More about the American Lion

Artist depiction of the American Lion.
Click to Read Article On American Lion

John Bradford Branney Books at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston!!

Books by John Bradford Branney

I am proud to announce that Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas is now carrying my books. This is a wonderful classic bookshop in the tradition of years gone by. Their book selection is unique and well thought out. You will find the staff knowledgeable and titles that you will not find at the big box bookstores. Visit Blue Willow Bookshop, even if you do not buy any of my books, you will find the experience, absolutely wonderful! Here is the Link to Contact Blue Willow 
   

Shadows on the Trail (2013)

Ghosts of the Heart (2013)

Winds of Eden (2014)

Saving Miguel (2013)

Light Hidden by Darkness (2014)

Shadows on the Trail $4.99 on Kindle, Nook, and other e books! $15 for entire Trilogy!!!!

10,000 + year old Folsom dart point found 
on the Shadows on the Trail site.

   How did a red and gray striped rock from a prehistoric rock quarry in Texas end up as a prehistoric tool on a northern Colorado ranch where the author found it approximately 11,000 years later? This was exactly what the author asked himself when he picked up this wonderful example of North America’s late Ice Age prehistory.

Click for $4.99 Kindle

   

John Branney has been searching for prehistoric artifacts in North America for much of his life. He has assembled a collection of human-made prehistoric artifacts spanning from the last Ice Age to the historical Indian tribes. The inspiration for the historical fiction novel Shadows on the Trail came from the author’s desire to know who made this prehistoric tool and how did it get over five hundred miles north of the source? What happened on its journey from Texas to northern Colorado? Since the facts of this artifact were lost to time, Branney wrote his own version of the artifact and its maker’s journey.      

Shadows on the Trail is set on the plains and mountains of northern Texas and southern Colorado at the end of the last Ice Age, a time of catastrophic climate change, melting ice and snow, and several large mammal extinctions. It was a time when small bands of humans fought to survive in a violent world. Shadows on the Trail is a tale of three prehistoric tribes whose paths collide, culminating into an emotional thriller filled with predatory animals, the devastating forces of nature, and human emotions.        

Chayton is an orphan and hunter in a tribe called the Folsom People. Forced to deal with a

Click for $4.95 Kindle

catastrophic drought, Chayton and the Folsom People abandon their peaceful canyon home and make their way north to an idyllic land called the North Country. While the Folsom People travel north across the arid plains, another tribe called the River People are attacked by a barbaric tribe called the Mountain People. An accidental encounter between a young boy called Honiahaka from the River People and the Folsom People, pull the three tribes into the same whirlwind adventure.

The plot of the book takes a surprising turn when the surviving River People convince the Folsom People to help them free their captives held by the Mountain People. Together, the two tribes devise an intricate plan to trap the lethal Mountain People and rescue the captives.        

Chayton’s lonely life takes a joyous turn when he rescues a beautiful young woman named Namid. While their independence initially keeps Chayton and Namid at arm’s length, love gradually wears down their barriers and a relationship blossoms. Just when the reader is lulled into believing that ‘good will triumph over evil’, the Mountain Tribe strike a devastating blow against the two tribes, leaving the future in doubt.

“In Shadows on the Trail, I wanted to convey the intelligence and tenacity of these First

Click for $4.95 Kindle Version

Americans,” John Branney said. “These people learned to survive in an unforgiving world where they just couldn’t pick up the phone and dial 911 when they got into trouble. They had to find a way out of trouble or they did not survive.”    

John Bradford Branney was born and raised in Wyoming and attended the University of Wyoming where he received a B.S. degree in Geology. After graduating, John entered the oil and gas industry as an engineer. Over his career, he held various positions in field operations, sales and marketing, logistics, program management, and the supply chain. During his career, he also obtained a MBA degree from the University of Colorado. In 2011, he retired from the oil and gas industry and immediately pursued his second career as an author. Shadows on the Trail is Mr. Branney’s debut book.

 

 

Buy the Kindle versions and enjoy the adventure!!!


The Alibates chert discoidal biface found on the Shadows on the Trail site surrounded
by Folsom artifacts. The Alibates chert discoidal biface was the
inspiration for the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy.

 

Winds of Eden - Life and Death Ten Thousand Years Ago!

Click to Order Winds of Eden

I often times wonder what it would be like to have lived a hundred or a thousand  or even ten thousand years ago like my characters in the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy. I do not know if my wondering about the past is common or unusual. When I used to ramble on about this to my mother while growing up, she always used to tell me that I was born in the wrong century. I think she was right.  

Figure one. The World of the Folsom People in the
Shadows on the Trail Trilogy.

How about you? Do you imagine yourself in a different time and place? Can you imagine living or visiting the late Pleistocene / early Holocene around 10,700 years ago and let’s say the high plains of Colorado or Wyoming? Hmm…for me, I have to admit that’s an interesting scenario. We could go visit a time and place when and where the characters of the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy were alive and breathing. You are probably thinking that it might be time for a padded room for me. “Don’t you know the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy is a work of fiction?” you might ask me. I would answer, "Yes, I know the Trilogy was fiction, after all, I wrote the books and much of  the story line came from my imagination. Still, those people really existed!"
 
So, let's go back to the past. Let’s board our make believe time machine and set the dial for 10,700 years ago. Now, close your eyes. Here we go!  





Ah, we made it! We now climb out of the time machine and look around. We had just left a modern and overcrowded city in the year 2016, but the same place 10,700 years earlier is empty and I mean really empty. There are no buildings or vehicles. There are no jet contrails across the pollution-free, crystal blue sky. there is just wide open space - beautiful, very wide open space!  

Figure two. Extinct American lion to the right, comparing its size
with a human on the left and a modern African lion in the middle.

Those glorious modern conveniences that we love and take for granted will not be invented for thousands of years in the future. For the rugged people who lived in North America at the time the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy took place, it had to have been a rough environment. Every day, the Folsom People must have fought just to survive another day and when the sun went down, watch out. They were on the menu for several nocturnal animal hunters of the night. The Folsom People had two critical items to survive; stay off the menu of the predators that hunted them and find food before they starve. Finding food was not easy. There were no grocery stores to walk into and pick the meat under cellophane. The Folsom people found their own food or you died.

 

Then, there was the climatic change that had North America in its grasp at the end of the Pleistocene. The continent was heating up and the glaciers were melting. The Folsom People not only had to fight climate change, but they also had to worry about dangerous wild beasts, such as those mammals that were heading for extinction, but not quite there, such as dire wolves, the American lion, small-faced bear, and sabre tooth cats. Not to mention those wild beasts and predators that were efficient enough to ultimately survive the Pleistocene and not go extinct, such as mountain lions,

Figure three. How do you think prehistoric people
explained these phenomena and disasters?   

wolves, and bears. If these beasts attacked and injured a prehistoric human, there were no hospitals or doctors to help. I am sure the Folsom People had some of their own remedies, but the remedies were primitive at best. There are numerous examples of archaeologists finding prehistoric human skeletons and discovering in the autopsies that these prehistoric people had all kinds of maladies such as unset and healed broken bones, raging abscesses, teeth worn down to the nerves, stone projectile points stuck in their bodies, skull fractures, eye sockets damaged, and many other untreated injuries. It sounds like the NFL and Obamacare was nowhere to be found.

                                                                      
If the Folsom People got into trouble, how did they handle it? They could not just dial 911 and expect help. There was no police department or fire department or hospital or ambulances. They were on their own in a super tough place to live. How did they protect themselves from these wild beasts and how did they fill their bellies with fresh meat? By our standards, the Folsom People's weapon systems were primitive and as I mentioned earlier, some of the animals the Folsom People hunted, hunted them.



Makes me glad we have a time machine and can travel back to good old 2016! Read the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy and see my version of the Folsom People's trials and tribulations. Then, tell me what you think. 


      I wish all of you a safe and prosperous 2016!

Winds of Eden - The Finale of the Trilogy 

Shadows on the Trail - first book in the Trilogy 

 Ghosts of the Heart - the second book in the Trilogy

  

WINDS OF EDEN - Long Awaited Dramatic Conclusion to Best Selling Prehistoric Trilogy!

Order Winds of Eden

Fans of the SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL series from bestselling author John Bradford Branney are already receiving their preordered copies of the final book in the trilogy

What happens when the hunters become the hunted? That is what readers have been eagerly waiting to find out in WINDS OF EDEN, the thrilling finale to John Bradford Branney’s series of books about a Paleoindian tribe in prehistoric America.

In the conclusion of this highly acclaimed historical series of novels, the Folsom People return to the plains and mountains of Texas and Colorado at the end of the last Ice Age, a time of dramatic climate change, rising temperatures and melting glaciers. This was a time when several large mammal species went extinct and when small bands of humans roamed the mountains and plains attempting to survive in an unforgiving and violent world. WINDS OF EDEN quickly propels readers into the story where the first two novels of the trilogy left off. Chayton and the Folsom People are continuing their fight of survival in a violent and unpredictable prehistoric world with little more than their spears and wits.

“We are thrilled to be bringing out this latest installment,” said Sarah Luddington, Mirador Publishing’s Commissioning Editor. “John has a knack for bringing this era to life and combines this with an incredible eye for detail in a thoroughly engaging story. John’s attention to historical accuracy is extraordinary and he even includes three genuine indigenous languages within the narrative.”

Hailed for its accurate depiction of life on the prairies and mountains of prehistoric Texas and

Famous rock - the four inch long Alibates discoidal biface
that was the inspiration for the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy.  

Colorado, WINDS OF EDEN is a fast-paced read that accurately builds on clues from the archaeological record and traditions practiced by the first Americans.

“In the first two books of the SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL TRILOGY my emphasis has been on the dynamics of survival for these early explorers of prehistoric America,” the author stated. “In WINDS OF EDEN, I took a slightly different direction from the first two books of the trilogy. Yes, the book is still a high-intensity adventure, but I have added another twist. In WINDS OF EDEN, the main characters must face the reality of their own finite mortalities. I am hoping that readers take away much more than just reading a fun adventure story. This book is my most fulfilling work that I have written so far and I hope readers feel the same way.”

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree and MBA from the University of Wyoming and

the University of Colorado, respectively. John currently lives in Texas and Colorado with his wife, Theresa. WINDS OF EDEN is the fifth published book by Author Branney.

Mirador Publishing continue their support of new authors and are proud to present John Bradford

Branney as an author to watch out for.

For more information visit the author at Shadows on the Trail Trilogy by John Bradford Branney on Facebook and at his blog at http://johnbbranney3.blogspot.com/.

SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL, GHOSTS OF THE HEART and WINDS OF EDEN are available in all good bookshops and online retailers both in paperback and eBook formats. Mirador Publishing may be contacted via their website at www.miradorpublishing.com

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Folsom to Agate Basin in SHADOWS on the TRAIL

Figure One - Two Colorado projectile points or knives surface found on private land. On the left
is a Montrose County Folsom dart and on the right is a Morgan County 2.7 inch long
Agate Basin knife form. John Bradford Branney Collection.   

In an earlier article on the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy blog site, I explained why I used separate Native American languages to differentiate between the three tribes in my first book in my Paleoindian adventure series, SHADOWS on the TRAIL. I also differentiated between two of the tribes with their use of different projectile point types for hunting and weapons.

In SHADOWS on the TRAIL, I used Folsom projectile points for the Folsom people and Agate Basin projectile points for the Mountain people. Figure one is a photograph of a Folsom projectile point from Montrose County, Colorado and an Agate Basin dart or spear point from Morgan County, Colorado. Both points are in my collection and as the photograph reveals, the technology and morphology of Agate Basin and Folsom points were quite different.

Below, is a passage from my book SHADOWS on the TRAIL. In this particular scene, Avonaco and two hunters from the River People were searching for evidence of who attacked their village and massacred their people. The hunters found a spear with a unique projectile point at the tip of it. Avonaco described his past experience with this type of projectile point.

Waquini then handed Avonaco an object and said, “Avonaco, we found this in the brush near the village.”

Avonaco held the spear in his hands. The spear shaft was the same wood that the River People used, but the stone spear point was different. The stone spear point was thinner and longer than any Avonaco had ever seen and made from a shiny, black rock material. Avonaco ran his thumb down the sharp edge of the spear point and quickly pulled his thumb away.

“Éŝkos!–Sharp!” Avonaco exclaimed, looking down at his bleeding thumb. 

He continued to examine the spear point, “I have only seen a spear point like this once made from this black rock. When I was a boy, I found a spear point much like this deep in the mountains. My father told me the black rock comes from the mountains.” 

Avonaco then inspected the sinew wrap that connected the stone spear point to the wooden spear shaft. The River People used sinew from deer or bison to attach their spear points. 

The Agate Basin point at the tip of that spear gave Avonaco a clue as to the tribal origin of its owner.    

Figure Two - CLICK to JOIN the ADVENTURE

In east central Wyoming, there is a famous archaeological site named Hell Gap. At the Hell Gap site, the investigators discovered an extensive geological section of rock representing thousands of years of human occupation. According to Irwin-Williams (1973), radiocarbon dates from the Hell Gap site indicate that the people who used Agate Basin points existed sometime between 10,500 to 10,000 uncorrected radiocarbon years ago. The Folsom people existed between 10,900 to 10,200 uncorrected radiocarbon years ago based on the radiocarbon dates from the Folsom sections at Hell Gap and the Agate Basin site in northeastern Wyoming. Geological evidence and radiocarbon dates indicate that there might have been some temporal (time) overlap between the latter years of the people making Folsom points and the early years of the people making Agate Basin points. Perhaps, it was the same people...

Even though there was spatial overlap and might have been temporal overlap between Folsom and Agate Basin People, Bradley (Frison 1991; Kornfeld, Frison, and Larson 2010) stated that he did not believe that Agate Basin technology came from Folsom technology. While a Folsom point is wide, thin and fluted, an Agate Basin point is thick and lenticular in cross section. If Agate Basin technology came from Folsom technology, there had to be a dramatic shift that has yet to be understood or explained.

Figure Three - Paleoindian projectile point evolution from left to right; Clovis, Goshen-Plainview, Folsom, Agate Basin,

Hell Gap, and Scottsbluff. Note the radical change from indented bases to lanceolate-shaped points at the Folsom / Agate Basin transition. For scale, Scottsbluff point to the right is 3.95 inches long. John Bradford Branney Collection. 

Since the technology used to make Agate Basin points was different than the technology used to make fluted Folsom points, do you think two separate cultures made them? They appeared to utilize the same bison resources but at different times.

Stanford (1999: 312) postulated that Agate Basin technology might have come from an earlier Northern Great Basin projectile point that was typologically similar to Agate Basin but predates Agate Basin on the High Plains by over one thousand years. He proposed that it was possible that Agate Basin technology came from the Paleo Arctic/Denali Complex people in eastern Beringia southward to the Great Basin and then across to the northern plains people a thousand or so years later.  

Figure three is a photograph of Paleoindian projectile point types beginning with Clovis and ending with Scottsbluff. My objective of figure 2 is to show the technological change, the paradigm shift that occurred between Folsom and Agate Basin. The only similarities between Folsom and Agate Basin projectile point are that they are both made of rock, both used to hunt game, and both have sharp tips.  

Archaeological evidence indicates that the people who made Folsom and the people who made Agate Basin utilized a similar economy, centered around bison procurement. But, to really understand the differences between these two Paleoindian cultures, we need the "soft evidence", i.e. languages and other perishable cultural practices and artifacts, and these are not going to be found in any archaeological record. 

Were the people who made Folsom and Agate Basin points the same people? What caused them to change projectile point technology? Will we ever find out what the relationship was between the people who made Folsom and the people who made Agate Basin? 

Frison, George C.

1991        Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Second Edition. Academic Press. 

Irwin-Williams, Cynthia, Henry T. Irwin, George Agogino, and C. Vance Haynes

1973    Hell Gap: Paleo-Indian occupation on the High Plains. Plains Anthropologist. 18      (59 ):   40-53.   

Kornfeld, Marcel, George C. Frison, and Mary Lou Larson

2010    Prehistoric Hunters-Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies. Third Edition. Left    Coast Press. Walnut Creek, California.  

Stanford, D. J.

1999    Paleoindian Archeology and Late Pleistocene Environments in the Plains and Southwestern United States. In Ice Age Peoples of North America, edited by R. Bonnichsen. Oregon State University Press. Corvallis, Oregon. 

The American Lion in Winds of Eden

Figure One - Based on fossil remains, a reconstruction of the 

American Lion (Panthera leo atrox).

Have you ever heard of the American Lion? 

No, not the 'African' Lion, the 'American' Lion. 

Well, hang on to your seats, you are just about to learn 

about the American Lion. 

When I did my research for Winds of Eden, the third book in my five-book prehistoric adventure series titled SHADOWS on the TRAIL PENTALOGY, I was looking for storylines around the biggest and baddest animal predators living around 12,000 plus years ago. I wanted the human protagonists in my book to face the same challenges that the real-life Paleoindians faced back in time, armed only with primitive weapons. If you have read any of my books in the SHADOWS on the TRAIL PENTALOGY, you know I like to put my main characters in lots of precarious and unpredictable situations, and some of these situations were with the wilder side of Pleistocene animal predators.

One of the most intriguing North American Pleistocene predators was the American Lion or Panthera leo Atrox. The American Lion's most distinguishing features were its size and long, slender limbs. Based on the studies from skeletal remains, researchers estimated the weight of Panthera leo Atrox somewhere between 390 to 520 pounds, with a few specimens estimated at over 700 pounds. The American Lion's length ranged from 5.3 to 8.2 feet long. That was one big cat! As far as large cats go, only European cave lions rivaled the American Lion’s size and no cat ever rivaled the American Lion's size on the North American continent (figure two).

Figure Two - Size comparison of North America's large cats during the Pleistocene. 
Note that the American Lion was the King of the Beasts on the continent.
Photograph courtesy of  Pinterest and Chris Urena.    

A passage introducing the American Lion in my prehistoric adventure book titled Winds of Eden 

In the starlight, her body looked gray and ghostlike as she crept quietly through the tall grass. She was the perfect predator, the top of the food chain. As she stepped, she lifted her legs high, careful not to brush up against the stalks of tall grass. The soft pads on the bottom of her feet made little sound as she glided over the rugged terrain. She had always been exceptionally careful, but tonight she was ravenous and impatient to find food. Even though she had nothing to fear, surprise was her element.  

Her nocturnal eyes picked up the tiny twinkle of light near the edge of the forest. She cautiously advanced. Her instincts made her mindful of danger. She meandered across the area, staying downwind from the light and studying the lay of the land as she quietly advanced towards her target. Occasionally, she stopped and lifted her snout high in the air, searching for smells. She had yet to pick up the scent of prey. Then a sound drew her attention. It came from the direction of the light. With her belly dragging the grass-covered ground, she slowly crept towards the source of the sound. As she moved closer, the brilliant light blinded her sensitive eyes. She smelled something new, a scent locked somewhere in her memory. Out of her throat came a low–pitched rumble. 

Figure Three - Available at Amazon.com.
Search Winds of Eden by John Bradford Branney 

It appears that the American Lion preferred living in open country based on the locations where paleontologists have found skeletal remains. According to Kurtén and Anderson in their book Pleistocene Mammals of North America, there is some evidence that Paleoindians hunted American Lions. Bones from Panthera leo atrox were found in a human garbage pile in Jaguar Cave in Idaho. Associated charcoal in the cave deposit was radiocarbon-dated to 10,370 ± 350 years BP (uncorrected radiocarbon years). Correcting this radiocarbon date would put the skeletal remains and garbage dump at around 12,000 calendar years, well within the timing in the SHADOWS on the TRAIL PENTALOGY and Winds of Eden.

Figure Four - Skeleton of  an American Lion at the
George C. Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits.   

The genetic lineage of the American Lion or Panthera leo atrox is not without controversy. Based on skeletal remains, paleontologists still debate whether Panthera leo atrox was lion-like or jaguar-like. In the first half of the last century, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule and German paleontologist Max Hilzheimer stated that Panthera leo atrox possessed a mixture of features from both lions and jaguars. The consolidation of the American Lion's features does not match any living species. Later in the century, John Merriam and Chester Stock proposed that after studying skulls from Panthera leo atrox, the mammal more closely resembled a jaguar than a lion. In the latest study, John M. Harris and Per Christianson focused on the cranium and jaws of Panthera leo atrox and proposed them to be more jaguar-like. I am sure the debates will continue.

The bottom line is that the American Lion or Panthera leo atrox was appreciably larger and genetically different than both the living species of the African lion and the South American jaguar. Since skeletal remains cannot directly tell us what the behavior and hunting habits of Panthera leo atrox were, In Winds of Eden, I assumed the behaviors and habits of a modern-day African Lion, an open country predator. 

Figure Five - Comparison in size between an extinct American Lion and a modern African Lion.
Courtesy of Jun's Anatomy.    

An adult male African lion stands three feet high at the shoulders and weighs between 350 to 440 pounds. The African lion is a massive beast, but it is small in comparison to the extinct American Lion. The African Lion is twenty–five percent smaller than the skeletal remains of the American Lion. African lion males have manes that vary in color and fullness. There is no physical evidence whether American Lion males had manes, and if so what color the manes were. The fur coats on African lions blend well in a semi-desert environment and their belly fur oftentimes is paler to neutralize the shadows from the sun. In the starlight, African lions are gray. People have described them as ghostlike.

African lions are agile and graceful. The African lion’s spine is supple enough to allow it to press its belly against the ground while arching its back like a bow in anticipation of leaping at its prey. The African lion’s legs are powerful and they are able to leap over fences as tall as twelve feet. African lions can leap distances of over forty feet and they can run at over forty miles per hour for short bursts. It is hard to imagine what the much larger Panthera leo atrox could do. Once the lion catches its prey, it uses its claws and forelimbs like grappling hooks to seize and drag the prey to their mouths. Like most carnivores, the African lion has two pairs of blade-like carnassial teeth located about halfway between the front of the jaw and the jaw joint. The carnassial teeth work together like scissors, allowing lions and other carnivores to slice off strips of flesh. Surprise is a key element in the African Lion's attack.

An African lion lives and hunts in a pride which is a lion's social unit. A pride typically consists of five females, two males, and the young. While females do most of the hunting, the male lions protect the pride and patrol the territory, always marking their territory and on the lookout for other males.

Sight is the primary sense that African lions use. African lions are very opportunistic and  hunt at any time of the night or day,

Figure Six - African Lion, the King of the Beasts. 

although they prefer darkness. When the lion pride hunts, the members oftentimes spread out along a front or in a semi-circle so the prey does not allude them. Lions have a reflective layer at the back of their eye that amplifies light into the eyeballs, making the lion's eyes shine at night. An African lion’s pupil is oval to round, just like ours. Smell and hearing are the next most widely used senses for African lions. African lions obtain most of their water requirements by eating other animals. They can survive in desert climates as long as there are animals to eat.  

Did the American Lion or Panthera leo atrox live and hunt in prides? We cannot be sure. Just imagine if you were a Paleoindian hunter and you were armed only with a spear. Imagine that you bump into a solitary American Lion or maybe even the pride. 

That would be a truly terrifying experience.

You don't have to imagine it. READ Winds of Eden and find out 

if you could have survived.

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