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
15. _Byron, Ogle County._—In 1873 (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. V, p.
110), James Shaw reported that a tooth identified as that of a mastodon
had been found, in 1858, in a tributary of Stillman’s Run, somewhere in
the region about Byron. The locality is low and marshy. The tooth is
described as having been a ponderous grinder, weighing 7.5 pounds, and
to have been covered with a black and shining enamel. A large mastodon
tooth, just out of the water, might attain such a weight. The statement
regarding the enamel confirms the identification.
Shaw reported further that a large leg-bone, supposed to belong to a
mastodon, had been found 2 or 3 miles above Byron, along the bank of
Rock River, 5 feet below the surface and about 15 feet above ordinary
water-level. It was sent to the State Museum at Springfield. This may
have belonged to one of the elephants.
_Harper, Ogle County._—In Netta C. Anderson’s list, on page 15, is a
report from Miss Abba Eager, of Forreston, concerning a tooth of a
mastodon found on the farm of Mr. Gross, in Forreston Township, about a
mile south of Harper, in the bed of a small stream. Another tooth had
been found there a short time before.
Byron is on Rock River, and the tooth was probably in alluvial deposits
laid down after the recession of the Wisconsin ice. Harper is near the
western border of the county and Illinoian drift covers the country. All
that can be said in the case of the teeth found is that the possessors
lived after the Illinoian stage.
16. _Urbana, Champaign County._—In the collection of the Illinois State
University the writer saw a lower right last molar of a mastodon, found
June 1, 1911, at Crystal Lake park, 1.5 miles northeast of the
university.
_Pesotum, Champaign County._—In 1909, Mr. Rufus M. Bagg (Univ. Ill.
Bull., vol. VI, No. 17, p. 49) recorded the fact that a mastodon tooth
with some bones had been found near Pesotum, on the farm of Mr. Pfeffer,
at a depth of 3.5 feet, in digging a ditch.
Inasmuch as this whole region is covered by Wisconsin drift, the animal
could not have lived there before the ice which deposited the Champaign
moraine had withdrawn. It probably lived there long after the ice had
retreated, possibly about the time when the megalonyx, whose claw alone
is left as a memorial of his former existence, lived in that region.
17. _Edgar County._—In 1870 (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. IV, p. 266),
Frank H. Bradley, in describing the topography of Edgar County, stated
that a nearly perfect skeleton of a mastodon had been found in one of
the sloughs of the prairie region which prevails in the western part of
the county. It was said that after having been exhibited over that
region it was sold to some museum in Philadelphia, but the writer has
been unable to obtain further information.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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