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
What is known as the Warren mastodon was discovered in 1845, on the farm
of N. Brewster, somewhere in the vicinity of Newburgh. It is an
unusually complete and well-preserved skeleton, and gave occasion to the
waiting of Dr. John C. Warren’s monograph entitled “Description of a
skeleton of the Mastodon giganteus.” Of this work there was an edition
printed in 1852, a second in 1855.
The spot where this skeleton was buried is described as being situated
in a small valley 300 or 400 feet in length, in which was a pond of
water 30 or 40 feet in diameter. Around this the ground was wet and
swampy. The summer of 1845 being unusually dry and the pond desiccated,
a search was being made for marl. At a depth of about 4 feet the summit
of the animal’s head was encountered. For many years this skeleton was
in Cambridge, but is now the property of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York.
According to Warren’s description (Monograph, 1st ed., pp. 5, 211,
vignette), there was a deposit of about 2 feet of bog-peat, then about a
foot of peat of a reddish color. This was underlain by a bed of
shell-marl of a thickness not given, but probably about 2 or 3 feet,
while below this was mud changing downward into clay. Some parts of the
skeleton were in this mud; but the head, the right fore-leg, the spinal
column, part of the ribs, the pelvis, and the tail were embedded in the
marl. However, Dr. Charles A. Lee (21st Ann. Rep. State Cabinet, New
York, p. 108) affirmed that these bones were not in the marl, but were
wholly embedded in the muck or peat.
Dr. F. A. Lucas, of the American Museum of Natural History, New York,
stated in 1902 (Science, vol. XVI, p. 169) that there is in Vassar
College a skeleton of a mastodon which is supposed to have been found at
Newburgh.
In the collection of the Brooklyn Institute, New York, is a partial
skeleton which was found in 1899 on the farm of F. W. Schaeffer, 3 miles
west of Newburgh. According to Dr. J. M. Clarke (Bull. 69, N. Y. State
Mus., p. 926), the bones were found lying on a stony pavement under muck
and marl. Osborn (Science, vol. X, 1899, p. 539) stated that the deposit
is mostly dark and contains thoroughly decomposed vegetable matter
mingled with a few stones and numerous remains of trees, some of which
retain marks of beavers’ teeth. The deposit appeared to consist of three
layers, indicating, as supposed, the building of three distinct
beaver-dams.
Dr. John Mickleborough (Brooklyn Eagle, Mar. 9, 1901) stated that he had
collected in this peat-swamp species of mollusks belonging to _Limnæa_,
_Physa_, _Planorbis_, and _Sphærium_. He regarded it as certain that the
swamp had been for a long time a fresh-water lake.
Eager (op. cit., p. 73) wrote that in 1838 a mastodon tooth had been
found near Newburgh, on a farm owned by Samuel Dixon. No details.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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