staying in their dens until evening. Visitors may see footprints along the dunes as evidence of the nightly hunting and foraging excursions of nocturnal animals. Carnivorans include coyotes, bobcats, badgers, and kit foxes. Rabbits include desert cottontails and black-tailed jackrabbits, with the jackrabbit capable of speeds as high as . Rodents include porcupines, pocket gophers, Apache pocket mice, and Merriam's kangaroo rats, the latter of which can jump up to high when frightened despite having only a body and an tail. The pallid bat eats insects in the air like other bats but locates most of its food on the ground while walking around. Four other bat species have also been observed in the park, though the pallid bat is the most commonly seen species, roosting under the visitor center's eaves during the summer. Among reptiles, the most common lizards include the bleached earless lizard, little white whiptail (Aspidoscelis gypsi – a white species that will detach its tail as an escape strategy), southwestern fence lizard, and side-blotched lizard; while the most common snakes are the coachwhip, Sonoran gopher snake, prairie rattlesnake, western diamondback rattlesnake, and the massasauga which is another species of rattlesnake, all of them venomous. The sole resident turtle species is the desert box turtle. Seven species of amphibians inhabit the park, including three species of toads: the Great Plains toad, the western toad, and the red-spotted toad; three species of spadefoot toads: Couch's spadefoot toad, the plains spadefoot toad, and the New Mexico spadefoot toad, all of which have a single hard, dark spade on the underside of each hind foot that is used to burrow into the ground to prevent water loss and hide from predators; and one salamander species, the barred tiger salamander. The White Sands pupfish is the only species of fish endemic to the Tularosa Basin, and the only fish found in the park. The pupfish has dark eyes, silver scales, and grows from in length. Paleontology Before the Pleistocene epoch ended about 12,000 years ago, the land within the Tularosa Basin featured large lakes, streams, and grasslands. The climate was wetter and cooler, producing a lot more rain and snow than in the present. Lake Otero was one of the largest lakes in the southwest, covering , which is an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. The basin teemed with life, including large ice age mammals that lived by