Earlier work on postglacial shifts in the distributions of beetle
species found in Rocky Mountain regional fossil assemblages (Elias,
1991) demonstrated several common patterns of range shifts in
response to climate change, but since the data were collected for
that paper, almost quarter of a century of new data have been
generated. These new data more than triple the number of species
reported to have become extirpated from the Rockies since the end
of the Lastglaciation, bringing new patterns to light for the first
time. Finally, a wealth of vertebrate fossil data from the Rocky
Mountain region has now become available, with which to
compare the fossil insect data.