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
11. _Tarboro, Edgecombe County._—In the U. S. National Museum (No. 205)
is a lower right last molar of _Mammut americanum_, recorded as having
been sent by Dr. Pitman, of Tarboro. It is black and very heavy.
12. _Rocky Mount, Nash County._—Professor E. Emmons (Geol. Surv. North
Carolina, 1852, p. 56) mentioned the finding of mastodon bones in
marl-pits, on the farm of Mr. Knight, on the bank of Tar River, 3 miles
west of Rocky Mount. The Pleistocene is here supposed to belong
principally to the Sunderland, but partly to the Wicomico formation.
Emmons, in 1858 (Rep. North Carolina Geol. Surv., Agric. East Cos., p.
199), figured and briefly described a molar of a mastodon which he
referred to _Mastodon giganteus_. This was found in a Miocene marl pit
in Halifax County; but so many Pleistocene species have been reported
from such marls that it is possible that the tooth belonged to a
Pleistocene animal.
Leidy (Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., vol. VII, 1869, p. 396) referred
this tooth with doubt to his _Mastodon obscurus_; but the type of the
latter, a lower molar (Leidy op. cit., plate XXVII, fig. 13), presents
no such double series of trefoils.
Leidy (op. cit., p. 247, plate XVII, fig. 16) referred some fragments of
mastodon teeth found at Tarboro to his _Mastodon obscurus_; but these
seem to the writer to belong to _Gomphotherium rugosidens_. We do not
know that _G. obscurum_ is a Pleistocene species, nor is it certain that
it has been found in North Carolina.
SOUTH CAROLINA.
(Map 5.)
1. _Beaufort, Beaufort County._—In the region about Beaufort numerous
remains of mastodons have been found, most of which are to be referred
to _Mammut americanum_. In the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia the writer has seen a fine left lower last molar of this
species. The collection of Rutgers College contains a part of a tooth
from Coosaw River. At Princeton University there is an upper second true
molar from somewhere about Beaufort. Field Natural History Museum has 3
teeth of _Mammut_, recorded as having been found in the phosphate bed at
Beaufort.
Leidy (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1870, p. 98) stated he had seen, in
the collection of C. N. Shepard at Amherst College, bones, fragments of
jaws, and teeth of mastodon from the marl at the head of Hilton Harbor,
on St. Helena Island, on which Beaufort is situated. Among these were 2
inferior tusks about 10 inches long and 2 inches in diameter at the
base. If the molars which accompanied them had differed from those of
_Mammut americanum_, Leidy would have been quick to note the fact.
Evidently the bones and teeth mentioned by Leidy are those now in the
mounted skeleton at Amherst College, described by Professor F. B. Loomis
(Amer. Jour. Sci., ser. 3, vol. XLV, p. 437, figs. 1, 3, 4) as _Mastodon
americanus_. This was a very large animal and the two large lower tusks
show that it belonged to _Mammut progenium_.
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