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
The hooded seal, _Cystophora cristata_, has probably been found fossil
at Gay Head. The only reason for this supposition is found in a
statement made by Charles Lyell (Proc. Geol. Soc. London, vol. IV, p.
32; Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XLVI, 1844, p. 319). He says that with other
remains on Martha’s Vineyard he found a tooth having the crown
fractured. Lyell submitted the tooth to Richard Owen, who pronounced it
to be that of a seal which seemed to be nearly allied to the modern
_Cystophora proboscidea_ (_C. cristata_). It seems quite probable that
this species lived there at the time when the walrus haunted the region.
It is of course possible that the remains reported belonged to an animal
that lived in that region as far back as the Miocene. The tooth was not
described or figured.
NEW JERSEY.
13. _Long Branch._—Portions of several walrus skulls have been found on
the beach at Long Branch. Two of these were described and figured by
Leidy in 1867 (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. XI, p. 83, plate IV,
figs. 1, 2, plate V, fig. 1). One skull, lacking the lower jaw, some of
the right hinder part of the cranium, and the exserted portion of one
tusk, was discovered in 1853. The other specimen, discovered about 1856,
furnished the front of the skull as far back as the middle of the
palate. Both belonged to old individuals. Leidy concluded that the
animals which had possessed these skulls belonged to the existing
species _Odobenus rosmarus_. He surmised that they had been floated to
the New Jersey coast on fields of ice or perhaps had lived there during
the Glacial period. The skull which was found in 1853 is now in the
collection of the Philadelphia Academy; the other is in the collection
of the New Jersey Geological Survey. Recently, Mr. Samuel N. Rhoads has
studied these skulls. He had also for examination the skull from Sable
Island, which has been mentioned. He concluded that these skulls
belonged to a species distinct from _O. rosmarus_ and which might bear
DeKay’s name, _O. virginianus_.
It does not appear to the present writer that Rhoads has successfully
maintained his proposition. He did not have at hand a sufficient number
of skulls of the existing Atlantic walrus to present all the variations
that occur in that species. Of course, the number of fossil specimens
was very limited. In discussing Rhoads’s conclusion, it will be of
advantage to consider a part of a skull which belongs to the Marsh
collection in Yale University. This specimen consists of the anterior
half of the skull, without the tusks and without the other teeth. It was
found at Kitty Hawk, at the mouth of Albemarle Sound, just north of
latitude 36°. It is thoroughly fossilized; and, having been found so far
south, it may be safely regarded as having belonged to the species which
inhabited the New Jersey coast during the Pleistocene.
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