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
50. _Attica, Wyoming County._—In 1887 (6th Ann. Rep. State Geologist,
for 1886, p. 34), J. M. Clarke described briefly the finding of supposed
mastodon bones at this place. A tusk had been encountered while a trench
for a water-main was being dug on Genesee street. In 1888 (41st Ann.
Rep. State Mus., for 1887, pp. 388–390, plate), Clarke reported the
results of further digging. The tusk was exhumed, as well as two ribs
and a fragment of the zygomatic arch. Nothing was found that
distinguished the remains from those of an elephant. The fragments were
in a bog-hole and scattered over a space about 20 by 25 feet. Under the
made ground was first a layer of loam 5 inches thick, then came in
succession 1 foot 2 inches of clayey muck and 1 foot 5 inches of
unlaminated clay and an undetermined thickness of laminated clay. The
bones lay in the unlaminated clay, at a depth of 2 feet 6 inches from
the natural surface. With the bones was what was thought to be an
ankle-bone of an elk. At a distance of 75 feet was another bog-hole, 75
feet in diameter, which was filled with muck lying on compact laminated
clay. The muck had a maximum thickness of 4 feet. At the deepest place
was found a piece of pottery and, beneath and around it, about 30
fragments of thoroughly burned charcoal.
The proboscidean remains here described must have been buried after (how
long after one can not say) the Wisconsin glacier had retired about
two-thirds the way from its southward limit to the shore of Lake
Ontario.
51. _Leroy, Genesee County._—J. E. De Kay, in 1842 (Zool. N. Y., Mamm.,
p. 104), stated that in 1841 a mastodon tooth weighing 2 pounds had been
found in a bed of marl 3 miles south of Leroy. No other information
appears to have been recorded.
The mastodons found here and at Stafford and Batavia could have lived
only after the ice-sheet had retired beyond these places. About this
time the waters of the Finger Lake region found an outlet westward to
the Mississippi by way of lakes Warren and Chicago.
52. _Stafford, Genesee County._—James Hall, in 1843 (Geol. 4th Dist., p.
364), reported that some years previously a small molar tooth had been
found at this place. It was beneath muck and upon a deposit of clay and
sand. There was found also a quantity of hair-like confervæ, of a
dun-brown color, which resembled hair so closely that a close
examination was necessary to determine its real nature.
53. _Batavia, Genesee County._—In 1904 (Bull. 69, New York State Museum,
p. 932), Clarke reported for H. L. Ward, that in 1897 two tusks, a part
of a skull with teeth, several vertebræ, and ribs had been found here.
Nothing more is known about this case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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