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
(Map 3.)
1. _Green Brier County._—In a cave situated somewhere in this county
were found the bones described in 1799 by President Thomas Jefferson
(Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. IV, pp. 246–260) under the name
_Megalonyx_. Colonel John Stewart became interested and saved some of
the bones from being carried away by curious inhabitants of the region.
The bones, a distal end of a femur, a complete radius, a complete ulna,
three claws, and some other foot-bones were secured and presented to the
American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, from which they passed
into the possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences, where they are
still preserved. Some of these were described by Dr. Caspar Wistar
(Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. IV, 1899, p. 526, plates I, II).
Inasmuch as this species may have existed during a large part of the
Pleistocene and certainly after the passing of the Wisconsin epoch, and
inasmuch as no other species were found associated with the megalonyx
bones, it is impossible to say to what part of the Pleistocene that
particular animal is to be assigned.
SOUTH CAROLINA.
(Map 3.)
1. _Beaufort, Beaufort County._—In the Charleston Museum the writer has
seen a left lower canine tooth of _Megalonyx jeffersonii_. The
fore-and-aft diameter is 34 mm., the transverse 18 mm. It is recorded as
found in dredging in Coosaw River. Tuomey (Rep. Geol. South Carolina,
1848, p. 203) found fragments of bones, probably belonging to
_Megatherium_, on Eddings Island, about 10 miles south of Beaufort.
2. _Charleston, Charleston County._—In 1855, Doctor Leidy (Smithson.
Contrib. Knowl., vol. VII, p. 55) stated that Professor F. S. Holmes, of
Charleston, had loaned him fragments of two very small teeth of
_Megatherium_ found on the shores of Ashley River. These were figured by
Leidy in 1860 (Holmes, Post-Pl. Foss. South Carolina, p. 111, plate XX,
figs. 8, 8_a_). In a collection belonging to Rev. Robert Wilson, in
Charleston, the writer has seen a tooth of _Megatherium_ found by the
Charleston Mining Company in Ashley River. G. E. Manigault (Proc.
Elliott Soc. Nat. Hist., 1886, p. 91) reported the finding of a claw
phalanx of _Megalonyx_ at Cainhoy, 12 miles from Charleston, on Wando
River.
In the Charleston Museum is a part of the right side of the upper jaw of
_Megatherium_, with the second and third teeth and parts of the sockets
of the first and fourth. It is recorded as having been found in the
Bolton phosphate mine on or in Stono River. There is in the same museum
a fragment of the left side of the lower jaw of the same animal. This
jaw contains the second and third molars and parts of the socket of the
first and fourth. It is recorded as having been found in the Kiawah
phosphate mine, Cooper River.
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