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
2. _Vero, St. Lucie County._—In the eighth Annual Report of the
Geological Survey of Florida, Dr. E. H. Sellards described and figured
(p. 150, plate XXV, fig. 1) a lower jaw of an elephant which had been
found near Vero. He referred it to _Elephas columbi_, but noted the
coarseness of the plates and its resemblance to _E. imperator_. The
specimen was found 3 miles west of Vero, along the bank of the drainage
canal. It was embedded in a matrix of brown sand, a stratum of which
rests on the marine shell-marl which underlies that region. It is
evident that a number of plates are missing from the front and that the
tooth is the hindermost one. If the jaw had belonged to _E. columbi_
with 24 plates, the length of the teeth would have been about 440 mm. In
case the tooth is that of _E. imperator_, there were probably about six
more plates in front originally and the tooth had a length of about 330
mm. The width appears to be about 90 mm. In the collection at Amherst
College is a fragment of a lower right molar, probably the hindermost,
of this species. Six plates are represented. It is well worn down, with
a very concave grinding-surface. The plates are close to 25 mm. thick.
The exact place where the tooth was found is not mentioned on the label,
but it was somewhere about Vero.
3. _Labelle, Lee County._—In the report just cited (p. 112, fig. 46),
Sellards described briefly and illustrated a tooth he secured in
Caloosahatchee River in 1914. Notes taken by the writer are to the
effect that it was found on the north bank of the river, at the first
bend above Labelle, probably in Lee County and in township 43 south,
range 29 east.
The length of this tooth, as preserved, is 310 mm. from the base in
front to the rear of the talon. There are 12 ridge-plates present, but
evidently some are gone from the front. There are 5 of these plates in a
100–mm. line, taken at the middle of their height. Sellards’s statement
that his figure is one-fifth the natural size is evidently an error for
one-third.
If this tooth belonged to _E. columbi_ and had the usual number of
plates, 24, the length would have been near 600 mm., a size not
probable. If it belonged to _E. imperator_, as the writer thinks it did,
the original length was somewhere near 450 mm., a more reasonable, but
at the same time, an unusual dimension.
4. _Everglades._—In the American Museum of Natural History, New York
(No. 8068), is a part of a tooth once supposed to belong to the Indian
elephant and said to have been mentioned somewhere by the geologist J.
D. Dana as having been found in the Everglades. It appears to be well
fossilized. It is apparently the second true molar of the right side.
There are 12 plates, of which 5 occupy a line 100 mm. long. Some plates
are evidently missing from the front. The writer believes that this
tooth belongs to _Elephas imperator_.
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