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
29. _Greeneville, Greene County._—In 1843 (Geol. 4th Dist., p. 367),
James Hall stated that he had visited this locality, where mastodon
bones had been found embedded in a fresh-water marl. Lyell (Ann. Mag.
Nat. Hist., vol. XII, 1843, p. 127) visited the locality with Hall and
stated that the mastodon bones occurred in swamps at a depth of 4 or 5
feet.
In 1843, Mather (Geol. 1st Dist., p. 44) wrote that bones supposed to
belong to an elephant had been found at this place. It is doubtful
whether the remains reported by Mather and Hall are those of an elephant
or of a mastodon.
30. _Coeymans, Albany County._—Mather (Geol. 4th Dist., 1843, p. 44)
recorded the finding of mastodon remains on Helderberg Mountain, on the
farm of a Mr. Shear, 4 or 5 miles west of Hudson River, in the township
of Coeymans. The remains were discovered in a bed of shell-marl, in the
bank of a marsh. A tusk was taken to Albany. It was supposed that most
of the skeleton was left in the ground.
31. _Cohoes, Albany County._—In the collection of the State Museum, at
Albany, there is a mounted skeleton of a mastodon discovered in 1866. It
was first announced by Robert Safely (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XLII, 1866,
p. 426) and soon afterward noticed by Marsh (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol.
XLIII, 1866, p. 115). It formed the subject of an essay by James Hall
(21st Ann. Rep. New York State Cabinet, 1871, pp. 98–148, plates
III-VII) and was further mentioned by Clarke in 1903 (op. cit., pp.
929–930). Portions of it were found in two large pot-holes on the shore
of Mohawk River. For the facts, and for Hall’s and Clarke’s conclusions,
the reader must consult the publications cited. G. K. Gilbert (21st Ann.
Rep. State Cabinet, 1871, pp. 129–148) discussed the geological
conditions at Cohoes. He concluded (p. 140) that the pot-holes were not
made during a glacial period, but were of preglacial age. Dr. H. L.
Fairchild, who has studied the history of the Mohawk Valley more
thoroughly than anyone else, has expressed in a letter to the present
writer the opinion that the pot-holes are post-glacial formations. The
matter is further discussed on page 297. Inasmuch as the glacial ice was
not far away, it appears to the present writer that the geological stage
may better be regarded as Late Wisconsin.
Professor Fairchild’s plate 16 of Bulletin No. 160 of the State Museum
of New York gives the position of the Wisconsin ice-sheet in New York at
the time that it had just withdrawn from the region about Cohoes. His
plate 17 presents a later stage, when the upper part of the Hudson
Valley was occupied by Lake Albany.
Unfortunately, no evidences of other animal life, excepting the beaver,
were found with the mastodon at Cohoes. Marsh, in his notice of the
discovery, gave a list of the trees recognized in the pot-holes. There
were white pine, hemlock, black spruce, larch, swamp maple, and white
birch.
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