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
54. _Holley, Orleans County._—In 1843, James Hall (Geol. 4th Dist., p.
364) reported that during the excavation of the Erie Canal, a large
molar tooth was found in a swamp near Holley. This, according to Clarke,
was about 1820. At the earliest time assignable, this mastodon lived
after the Wisconsin glacier had withdrawn nearly into the basin of Lake
Ontario. It may have had its existence nearly up to the Recent epoch.
55. _Medina, Orleans County._—In the Buffalo Society of Natural History
is a part of the left ramus of the lower jaw of a mastodon, labeled as
having been found in a swamp near Medina. It contains the second and
third true molars. The remark about the geological age of the Holley
mastodon is applicable to this one.
56. _Niagara, Niagara County._—In 1842 (Zool. N. Y., Mamm., p. 104), De
Kay stated that a mastodon tooth had been found in digging a mill-race
on Goat Island, 12 or 13 feet below the surface. Lyell, in 1843 (Ann.
Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. XII, p. 127), alluded to the occurrence of remains
of mastodon in a fresh-water formation on the right bank of the Niagara
River at the Falls. The formation appears to have consisted of gravel.
These are possibly the same remains as those mentioned by De Kay. Hall
(Geol. 4th Dist., p. 364) stated that the deposit was a fine gravel and
loam containing fresh-water shells, and evidently of fluviatile origin.
These deposits were noted by W. E. Logan (Geol. Canada, 1863, pp.
913–914). On the Canadian side of the gorge below the Falls, 16 species
of fresh-water mollusks were found in the sand, evidently where they had
lived.
At the museum of Davis Brothers, at Niagara Falls, Mr. B. U. Davis told
the writer that he owned 2 mastodon teeth which had been found in
digging for the foundations of the Tower Hotel, which faces the Falls
park.
Mastodons could have lived where Niagara Falls is now located only after
the Wisconsin ice-sheet had retired far enough to permit the waters of
Lake Iroquois to fall somewhat below those of Lake Erie, the shrinkage
of the latter to its present basin, and the formation of dry land or
land not too swampy around the present Niagara Falls.
57. _Hinsdale, Cattaraugus County._—Hall (op. cit., p. 364) stated that
at this place a tusk, with some horns of deer, had been found in gravel
and sand, 16 feet below the surface. Clarke (Bull. 69, etc., p. 933)
mentions this case and suggests that the antlers were possibly those of
the elk. The tusk may quite as well have been that of an elephant.
Lyell (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. XII, 1843, p. 127) referred to this
discovery as showing mastodon bones at the highest elevation known at
that time, 1,500 feet above the sea.
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