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
In 1857 (Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Science, vol. X, Nat. Hist., p. 10), J.
W. Foster reported that a jaw and three teeth of a mastodon had been
found in yellow clay, about 3 feet from the surface, at Bloomfield, in
this county. This name has disappeared from the maps and gazetteers.
A little of the southern border of the county is occupied by Illinoian
drift, but the greater part is covered by drift of Wisconsin age. The
mastodons reported probably lived after the retirement of the last ice
of the Glacial period.
18. _Fairmount, Vermillion County._—In 1870, Frank H. Bradley (Geol.
Surv. Illinois, vol. IV, p. 242) stated that in September 1868 remains
of a mastodon were found 2 miles southeast of Fairmount. He described
the locality as having a black soil, from 1 to 2 feet deep, and
underlain by a light-brown tenacious clay, filled with the shells of
_Lymnæa_, _Physa_, _Planorbis_, _Sphærium_, etc. The bones of the
mastodon lay partly in this marly clay, but the tip of one tusk rose to
within 13 inches of the surface. The bones were considerably decayed,
but Bradley thought this had resulted from the previous draining of the
land and the accession of air to the bones. Some fragments of this
skeleton are in the collection of the Chicago Academy of Science. The
locality is very close to the northern edge of the Champaign moraine.
19. _Iroquois and Vermillion Counties._—Under this number must be
recorded 3 mastodons found at as many different places. Hoopeston is in
Vermillion County, but evidently the mastodon credited to this place was
found in Iroquois County.
_Six miles northwest of Hoopeston._—In 1881 (2d Ann. Rep. Dept. Statist.
and Geol. Indiana, p. 18; of complete report, p. 386), John Collett gave
an account of the discovery of a nearly complete skeleton of a mastodon
about 6 miles northwest of Hoopeston. The locality is evidently in the
southwestern corner of township 24 north, range 11 east. Each tusk
formed a full quarter of a circle, was 9 feet long, 22 inches in
circumference at the base, and weighed, while yet wet, 175 pounds. The
lower jaw was well preserved, nearly 3 feet long, and contained a
magnificent set of teeth. The leg-bones, when joined at the knee, made a
length of 5.5 feet. What was supposed to be remains of herbs and grasses
which the animal had eaten were found between the ribs.
The following mollusks are reported as being found in the same clay as
that which contained the bones: _Pisidium abditum?_, _Valvata
tricarinata_, _Valvata striata?_, _Planorbis parvus_. It is stated that
these shells live at present all over the States of Illinois, Indiana,
and Michigan, and indicate that the climate of the mastodon’s day was
greatly like that of the present in that region.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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