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
1. _St. Catharines, Lincoln County._—In 1898 (Ottawa Naturalist, vol.
XII, p. 137), Mr. L. M. Lambe stated that there was in the collection of
the Geological Survey of Canada from this place a molar of a mammoth,
purchased in 1887 by Mr. Whiteaves. It had been found while excavating
under the opera house for a sewer, on Queen Street. In the collection of
the Buffalo Society of Natural History the writer has seen a cast of a
lower right hindermost molar, the original of which is said to have been
found at St. Catharines. It was probably made from the tooth now in the
collection at Ottawa. There are 22 plates; probably one or two may be
missing from the front, and the wear extends over only 6 plates. Of
these there are 7 in a 100–mm. line. The plates of the hinder half are
considerably curved, and the hindermost ones lean strongly forward. The
writer regards the tooth as that of _Elephas columbi_.
As shown by Fairchild’s plate 17 (Bull. 160, New York Geol. Surv.) and
Coleman’s plate 22 (Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., XV, p. 347) this town is
situated within the Iroquois beach. The elephant could, therefore,
hardly have lived at or before the time of the formation of the beach;
in reality it probably lived long after the lake had retired to its
present limits.
In his “Catalogue of Casts of Fossils,” 1866, page 37, Henry A. Ward
gave a figure of a cast of an elephant tooth, No. 143, the original of
which was said to have been found at St. Catharines. This tooth may be
the one now at Ottawa, but if so the figure is incorrect.
2. _Hamilton, Wentworth County._—In 1863 (Canad. Nat. and Geol., vol.
VII, p. 135), a lower jaw of an elephant was described under the name
_Euelephas jacksoni_ Briggs and Foster. This had been found near
Hamilton, at the extreme western end of Lake Ontario. It was mentioned
and figured as _Euelephas jacksoni_ in the same year by W. E. Logan
(Rep. Geol. Surv. Canada, p. 914, figs. 495, 497). The specific name,
however, is not to be credited to Briggs and Foster, for it was proposed
by W. W. Mather in 1838 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XXXIV, p. 362, figures)
for a lower jaw of an elephant found in Jackson County, Ohio. This jaw
is, however, from the description and the figure, wholly indeterminable.
Lambe (Ottawa Naturalist, vol. XII, p. 136) presents a short history of
the specimen found at Hamilton. It was reported first by T. Cottle in
1852 (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 2, vol. X, p. 395; reprint in Amer.
Jour. Sci., vol. XV, 1853, p. 282). Besides the jaw, lacking most of the
left ramus, there was found a much-curved tusk nearly 7 feet long.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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