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
In the American Museum of Natural History, New York, there is a lower
jaw of a mastodon with second and third true molars, right and left,
which is said to have come from Cohoes.
32. _Copenhagen, Lewis County._—In 1884 (Trans. Linn. Soc. N. Y., p.
47), Dr. C. Hart Merriam stated that there had been found in 1877, in a
marl bed about a mile west of Copenhagen, a tusk measuring 5 feet 9
inches in length. It was purchased for the State Cabinet. It could not
be determined whether this had belonged to an elephant or a mastodon.
33. _Center Lisle, Broome County._—In the Watkins Glen-Catatonk folio
No. 169 of the U. S. Geological Survey, on page 28, Dr. Ralph S. Tarr
stated that remains of a mastodon had been found a few hundred yards
north of this town, in a boggy place where a spring emerges from the
base of a gravel terrace. He did not tell what parts had been found. He
remarked that one could not be certain whether the bones had been washed
out of the gravel or had come from an animal which had mired there. In
geological age it must be referred to the last half of the Wisconsin
stage.
34. _Brookton, Tompkins County._—In the American Naturalist, volume V,
1871, page 314, C. Fred Hartt gave an account of the discovery of
mastodon bones at Mott’s Corners, on Six-mile Creek. This is the former
name of the present village of Brookton. Only 2 teeth and some fragments
of bones were secured. The locality is situated in a deep valley of the
creek, which had once been filled with drift, and through this the creek
had cut down to solid rock. Where the bones were found was a small
peat-bog consisting of a layer of peat varying from a few inches to 2
feet. This was full of sticks, pine knots, bark, etc., more or less
decayed. Below this peat was a layer, a few inches thick, composed of
clay mixed with pebbles and pieces of shale. In this were the teeth and
decayed bones. The whole was underlain by drift materials. Tarr, as
cited above, stated that mastodon remains had been found in a swamp in
the valley bottom at Brookton. He did not say when the discovery was
made, nor what was found. It is not unlikely that the two cases are the
same.
In 1871 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. II, p. 58), Dr. Burt G. Wilder reported
that 5 teeth and many fragmentary bones had been found near Ithaca, in a
deposit of modified drift. The writer has been informed by Miss Pearl
Sheldon, of Cornell University, that these are the same remains as those
reported by Professor Hartt.
The mastodon found at Brookton could hardly have lived there before the
stage when the waters that gathered at the southern edge of the
retreating ice were reaching the sea by way of Mohawk and Hudson Rivers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account