The Pleistocene of North America: and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°Hay, Oliver Perry
Science
The Pleistocene of North America: and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°
Hay, Oliver Perry
Paleontology -- North America; Paleontology -- Pleistocene; Vertebrates, Fossil
2. _Adrian, Lenawee County._—In the American Journal of Science (vol.
XXXVIII, 1864, p. 223), Dr. Alexander Winchell reported the discovery of
remains of a mastodon on section 7 of the township of Adrian, Lenawee
County. The locality is said to have been about 7 miles northwest of the
town of Adrian. The township must therefore be that designated as 6
south, 4 east. Winchell gave a list of the bones, and this comprises
probably about half of the skeleton, including the skull. According to
Winchell, these remains were found at a depth of only about 2 feet in a
peat-bog; beneath this peat, which was 2.5 feet thick, was marly clay,
passing at the depth of 4 feet into loose sand.
According to the glacial map of Leverett and Taylor, the locality would
lie well outside the limits of Lake Maumee and would be on the Fort
Wayne moraine. Probably a long while after the Wisconsin glacial sheet
had retired from Michigan, this mastodon died there and became covered
by the thin deposit of peat, as found. Here may be noted likewise some
remains of a mastodon which Winchell, in the same paper, says had been
found in Adrian.
In the U. S. National Museum (No. 188) there is a lower jaw of a
mastodon, reported to have been found in a lacustrine marsh in this
county, in the “same locality as the Decker mastodon in Adrian College.”
A note states that with this were found bones of deer, elk, and
castoroides. (See further, under the account of the skull of
_Castoroides_ found at Adrian.)
In the annual report of the Michigan Geological Survey for 1901, page
253, A. C. Lane mentioned that at Clinton, Lenawee County, Mr. P. B.
Gragg had found several teeth and bones of mastodon. These seem to have
been buried in the same glacial drain-way as those found in Adrian
township.
27. _Clayton, Lenawee County._—Mr. George Townsend, of Clayton,
Michigan, has informed the writer that he has the lower jaw of a
mastodon which he found while digging a posthole on his farm near that
town. The locality is described as the middle of the line between the
southeast and northeast quarters of southeast quarter of section 7, T.
7. S., R. 2 E., and near a creek. The township is Dover. According to
Leverett and Taylor the immediate region is covered by glacial ground
moraine.
3. _Howell, Livingston County._—Dr. A. C. Lane (op. cit., p. 252)
reported that a lower tooth and a part of a pelvis had been obtained in
dredging the Shiawassee River, in 1900. Mr. C. W. Gilmore, of the U. S.
National Museum, tells the writer that he saw a mastodon tooth which had
been found in a swamp 2 miles southwest of Howell. Alexander Winchell,
in 1864 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XXXVIII, p. 224), reported mastodon
remains from Green Oak, in Livingston County. No details were furnished.
Most of this county is occupied by the Charlotte moraine system, formed
by the ice-lobe which extended out from Saginaw Bay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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