Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado
                        
                     
                                                         
                
                    Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado
                                            
                            By Sydney Anderson
                            
                                24 Nov, 2018                            
                            
                         
                                        
                                                                        Excerpt........The Grand Mesa of Colorado is a westward extension of the mountains of central Colorado, standing more than five thousand feet above the valleys of the Colorado and the Gunnison rivers. To certain montane mammals the mesa is a peninsul
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                                                Excerpt........The Grand Mesa of Colorado is a westward extension of the mountains of central Colorado, standing more than five thousand feet above the valleys of the Colorado and the Gunnison rivers. To certain montane mammals the mesa is a peninsula of cool, moist, forest surrounded by inhospitable, hot, dry, barren lowland.
Few mammals previously have been preserved or reported from the Grand Mesa. Of the species here reported, Warren (1942, The Mammals of Colorado, Univ. Oklahoma Press) mentioned only four from the counties in which the Grand Mesa is located. Twenty-two species are here recorded from the Grand Mesa, and two localities below the rim of the Mesa on the north slope, on the basis of specimens preserved, and five additional species on the basis of observations. Many of these species are limited to a montane habitat or find their optimum conditions there. The known geographic ranges of some subspecies are extended westward. Less