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
Equus occidentalis.
E. giganteus?
Mylohyus? sp. indet.
Procamelus coconinensis.
P. longurio.
Antilocapra americana?
Marmota arizonæ.
Citellus tuitus.
Neotoma cinerea.
Lepus benjamini.
Brachylagus browni.
Taxidea robusta.
Canis nubilus?
C. latrans?
Chasmaporthetes ossifragus.
The writer believes that this assemblage of mammals must be referred to
the Pleistocene. It will be noted, however, that there are two species
of the genus _Procamelus_. These resemble so much two species, _P.
major_ and _P. minimus_, described by Leidy and Lucas (Trans. Wagner
Free Inst., vol. IV, pp. I-XIV, 15–61) from the Alachua clays of
Florida, that it seemed at first necessary to identify them as such. The
genus _Procamelus_ seems, therefore, to be brought definitely into the
early Pleistocene, probably the Nebraskan.
The collections made in the Alachua clays in Florida were obtained in
Alachua and Levy counties. On pages 195 and 375 will be found an account
of the geological conditions under which the fossils were found, and
lists of the species. The essential features are that such supposed
Miocene or Pliocene genera as _Gomphotherium_, _Procamelus_,
_Teleoceras_, and _Aphelops_ were found associated with the Pleistocene
genera _Odocoileus_, _Tapirus_, _Megatherium_, and _Equus_. This has
been explained on the theory that the clays are of Tertiary age and that
the Pleistocene species had become mingled with those of an earlier
time. At a number of places in Florida where phosphate rock has been
mined there have been secured similar associations of early camels,
rhinoceroses, horses (_Hipparion_, _Parahippus_) with genera belonging
undoubtedly to the Pleistocene. This has occurred so often that the
writer doubts the correctness of the explanation given. He ventures,
therefore, to include in the Pleistocene of the Nebraskan stage the
various deposits that have received the names Alachua clays, the
Dunnellon formation, and Bone Valley formation. The latter, called also
the land-pebble phosphates, is believed by Sellards to be
contemporaneous in age with the Dunnellon or hard phosphates, but to
have accumulated under different conditions. Both the Alachuan and the
Bone Valley formations were referred by Sellards to either the late
Miocene or the early Pliocene, with an evident preference for the
latter. It seems to have been the presence of the rhinoceroses that most
influenced him in his assignment of the deposits; but there were
naturally other considerations. He wrote:
The presence of rhinoceroses in the formation is believed to
establish definitely the fact that the beds can not be later than
the early Pliocene, since rhinoceroses in America apparently did not
survive beyond that time (Fla. Geol. Surv., vol. VII, p. 73).
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