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° — John Shaqi
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
This was the warm stage which succeeded the glacial Illinoian. Between
the Illinoian and the Wisconsin there passed a long period of time. It
is now believed that it was interrupted by the Iowan ice-sheet, but this
appears not to have lasted long nor to have occupied any considerable
area. Associated with it in some way was the accumulation of much loess.
This was formerly supposed to have been deposited to a large extent at
least during the Sangamon; but, as Leverett informs me, it appears to
have been laid down at a time nearer the Wisconsin than the Illinoian.
This Iowan drift and the loess has been the subject of a special
investigation by Alden and Leighton (Iowa Geol. Surv., vol. XXVI, pp.
49–212). Few vertebrate fossils have been found in the loess. Their
bones may have been dissolved out by the percolating rain-water, and yet
the delicate shells of land mollusks are abundant. A collection which
the writer regards as belonging rightfully to the Sangamon was made at
Alton, Illinois, many years ago, by William McAdams. A list of the
species and an account of the geological conditions connected with it
are presented on page 339. The remains appear to have accumulated in a
pond on the Illinoian drift and to have been covered by loess. The horse
was yet in existence, as well as the deer _Sangamona_ and the antelope
_Taurotragus americanus_. Two-thirds of the 15 species are extinct. A
smaller number of species have been collected near Kimmswick, just below
St. Louis, Missouri. The remains found in a cave in Bexar County, Texas,
are believed to belong here (Hay, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. LVIII, p.
129). It is, however, in the Alleghany Mountains that most of the
vertebrates have been collected which the writer refers to the Sangamon
stage. These have been found in caves and fissures from northern
Pennsylvania to northern Alabama. Unfortunately, although mostly
discovered several years ago, some of these collections have not yet
been well studied and have not been accessible to the writer. They
contain two or three species of horses, two or three genera of
peccaries, tapirs, the deer _Sangamona_, the antelope _Taurotragus_, and
one or more species of saber-tooth tigers. Half or more of the species
are extinct. To the writer these assemblages seem to fit into the
history nowhere so well as into the Sangamon stage.
Another assemblage that probably belongs here is that made at Toronto
(p. 282). This indicates a warm climate, since the pawpaw and the osage
orange grew there.
XV. THE PEORIAN INTERGLACIAL STAGE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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