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
39. _Seneca Castle, Ontario County._—Professor Edward Hitchcock jr., in
1885 (Science, vol. VI, p. 450), announced the discovery of what was
supposed to be remains of mastodon at the bottom of a peat morass,
lately drained, at the town named. This place is near Flint Creek. No
teeth and no part of the skull were found. The remains were taken to
Amherst College. With these bones was found also an antler of an elk. In
a letter written December 21, 1918, Dr. F. B. Loomis, of Amherst, states
that he regards these bones as those of an elephant.
In Dr. J. M. Clarke’s report of 1903, on page 931, Mr. H. J. Peck gave
an account of this mastodon, together with a plate representing the way
in which the bones were scattered. They were found at a depth of about 3
feet and are shown to have been lying in a deposit of clay and marl,
above which came in succession clay and sand, sand, peat, and muck.
Beneath the bones were, in order, sand, blue clay, sandy clay, and a
thin layer of sand resting on boulder clay.
The stage at or after which this mastodon or elephant lived was probably
that represented by Fairchild’s plate 38.
40. _Perkinsville (Portway), Steuben County._—Dr. John M. Clarke, in
1908 (61st Ann. Rep. New York State Mus., vol. I, p. 44), reported the
discovery of a part of a skeleton of a mastodon in a large swamp 0.75
mile north of Portway railroad station. The swamp occupies a depression
in a mass of morainic drift. At the surface is from 6 to 12 inches of
black muck, beneath which is a bed of nearly white marl from 6 inches to
6 feet in thickness. The bones were lying 4 or 5 rods from the border of
the swamp. Those found were in a fine state of preservation. Among them
was one ramus of the lower jaw with teeth.
This and the following specimen lived after the Wisconsin glacier had
withdrawn about halfway from its terminal moraine to the shore of Lake
Ontario.
41. _Wayland, Steuben County._—In 1874 (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist.,
vol. XVII, p. 91), a report by Dr. J. G. Hunt, of Philadelphia, was
presented, which dealt with the contents of the stomach of a mastodon
said to have been found at Wayland. No statement was made as to the
skeleton of the animal, or the exact place where it had been discovered.
No remains of trees of any kind were detected, but stems and leaves of
mosses, confervoid filaments, a fragment supposed to belong to a rush,
woody tissue, and bark of herbaceous plants.
42. _Pittsford, Monroe County._—In 1831 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XIX, p.
358), Mr. J. A. Guernsey, of Pittsford, wrote that a part of a tusk,
supposed to belong to a mastodon, had been found on the bank of
Irondequoit Creek, 2.5 miles east of the town. The part secured was 7.5
feet long, and the whole tusk was thought to have been about 9 feet
long. The figure accompanying the description seems to indicate a
mastodon tusk rather than that of an elephant, but one can not be
certain about the matter. A much decayed cervical vertebra also was
found.
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