Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona

Arizona 13,000 Years Ago

In 1951, Dr. Emil Haury, Director of the Arizona State Museum, received an
exciting call. Ranchers near Naco, Arizona found two projectile points near
huge bones eroding out of a wash. Check out this slide show to learn what happened.

A Spectacular Discovery

A more interactive version of our diorama

The Diorama in Detail

13,000 years ago Arizona was very different from today. Huge mammoths roamed the landscape and the people who lived here hunted them for food. Follow along as we learn about this exciting chapter in Arizona's history and discover what archaeology can tell us about the past.

(Resource kits produced by Sarah Willwater and Lisa Falk for Museums for Digital Learning, 2022.)

Arizona in the Late Pleistocene Era

Activity Worksheet

When humans first lived in Arizona 13,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene era, the southern Arizona landscape was not a desert, but a land of grassy slopes and tree-covered mountains. Herds of animals, many now extinct, were a source of food, clothing, and raw materials — such as bone and sinew — for the first human inhabitants of the region.

Rainfall was much greater during the Pleistocene — about 40 inches a year, instead of the current 12 inches. As a result of this rainfall, southern Arizona was grassland, with oak, hickory, and other trees growing along permanent watercourses. Greater rainfall fed bogs, whose lush plant growth attracted many animal species.

This mammoth was about 13 feet tall and probably weighed about 10 tons or 20,000 pounds!

How tall are you? How much do you weigh? Print the activity sheet, and using the ruler, draw yourself by the mammoth.

This diorama recreates the late Pleistocene landscape in southern Arizona based on extensive archaeological and geological evidence. Shown in the diorama, from left to right, are two giant ground sloths, a dire wolf, a mammoth, and two camels. These animals, all now extinct, are depicted at the same scale as the human. Behind these animals are an extinct species of wild horse that occupied North America during the last Ice Age, as well as extinct species of bison and antelope.

Several species in the diorama are still alive today, including tapirs (browsing to the left of the human), peccaries, and jaguars. While jaguars are reestablishing territory in the mountains of southern Arizona, tapirs no longer live north of Mexico — their range is restricted to South and Central America. Mule deer, like many other animals hunted by the first inhabitants of southern Arizona, are the same as those living in the region today.

Which animals can you identify? (Hint: there are 11 different animals in this diorama) After you are done looking, go to the next slide for the answer key to see how you did.

The diorama was designed and constructed by Louis Paul Jonas Studios of Hudson, New York. Specializing in life-size taxidermy mounts and diorama exhibits, life-size sculptures and castings, and scale models, the studio was a popular fabricator for museum exhibits for nearly a century. 

The diorama was constructed in 1951. It was based on extensive research by archaeologists, many from the Arizona State Museum and the University of Arizona’s Department (now School) of Anthropology, coupled with the work of geologists. 

(Pictured: Diorama artist Louis Paul Jonas working on a triceratops at Indiana State Museum. Photograph courtesy of NC Museum of Natural Sciences.)

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Arizona in the Late Pleistocene Era

Arizona 13,000 Years Ago

Plentiful Animals