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
Professor Page L. Baker, superintendent of schools in Woodhull, states
that first a part, 6 feet 10 inches long, of a tusk was found, 9 inches
in circumference at the base, 6 inches at the other end. Some scattered
bony plates supposed to belong to the skull were observed, but no
limb-bones were found. Five teeth were secured, varying in weight from 6
to 16 pounds; one had 20 enamel plates, and there were 6 of these plates
in a 100–mm. line. It can hardly be doubted that the species represented
was _Elephas columbi_.
Professor Baker stated that the pit was about 14 feet deep, the upper 2
feet consisting of prairie soil, possibly loess. Below this is 10 feet
of red clay, and then about 2 feet of white clay, resting on a layer of
muck. The bones were in the white clay, but resting on the muck. The
teeth were wholly in the white clay. The tusk was removed about 15 feet
from the teeth. This region is covered by Illinois drift, overlain by
loess, sometimes of considerable thickness. It does not appear from the
depth and character of the deposits that the Illinoian drift had been
penetrated. The muck-bed belongs probably to the Sangamon stage,
possibly to the Iowan. The reader is referred to the geological sections
found at Galva, about 18 miles further east (see p. 142).
MARYLAND.
(Map 12.)
1. _Oxford Neck, Talbot County._—In 1869 (Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol.
XI, p. 178), Cope wrote that there had been found on the farm of Lambert
Kirby, in Oxford Neck, a molar tooth resembling that of a half-grown
_Elephas primigenius_ or _E. columbi_. Besides this tooth were remains
of what Cope called _Elephas americanus_ Leidy. These, it is supposed,
belonged to _Elephas primigenius_. The collection referred to had been
placed in the cabinet of the Baltimore Academy of Sciences; but the
writer has not seen it. Lucas (Maryland Geol. Surv., Pliocene and
Pleistocene, 1906, p. 167) describes the teeth from this locality. He
identified one small tooth as belonging certainly to _E. columbi_, and a
large one as probably belonging to the same species.
2. _Queen Anne County._—In 1820, Horace H. Hayden (Geolog. Essays, p.
121) wrote that he had an enormous grinder of the Asiatic elephant, dug
up in the county named, on the plantation of Mr. Carmichael. It was said
to have been enveloped in a stiff blue clay.
Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill (Cuvier’s “Theory of the Earth,” 1818, p. 394,
plate I, figs. 3, 5) mentions and figures the tooth, apparently that of
_Elephas columbi_. It is said to have been dug out of the ground by the
side of a marsh. It was the last upper molar of probably the right side.
WEST VIRGINIA.
(Map 12.)
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