1907] On a Tooth op Ovibos 15 



ON A TOOTH OF OVIBOS, FROM PLEISTOCENE 

 GRAVELS NEAR MIDWAY, B.C.* 



By Lawrence M Lambe, F.G.S., F.R.S.C, of the Geological Survey 



of Canada. (With plate). 



An upper molar tooth of a ruminant has lately been pre- 

 sented to the Geological Survey by Mr. C. B. Bash, of Greenwood, 

 British Columbia, who states in a letter accompanying the speci- 

 men that it is from Rock Creek about eight miles above its erftry 

 into Kettle River, and about four miles north of the International 

 Boundary. Rock Creek joins Kettle River from the west about 

 thirteen miles west of Midway. The tooth was found on a rock 

 surface beneath a deposit of unconsolidated gravel, about two 

 hundred feet in thickness, in a tunnel run into a hill in connection 

 with placer mining. 



The tooth received from Mr. Bash is the posterior true molar 

 from the right side, and is referred provisionally to the genus 

 Ovibos. In comparison with the corresponding tooth of an adult 

 male musk-ox (O.moschattis, Zimm.) from Fort Rae, Great Slave 

 Lake,|in the Museum of the Geological Survey, it is seen to be 

 slightly smaller and less robust but otherwise remarkably similar. 



Remains, principally the hinder portion of skulls with horn- 

 cores attached, from the Pleistocene of the United States, have been 

 assigned to the genus Ovibos or related genera under a number of 

 specific names, some of which are apparently synonyms. Ovibos 

 bombijrons (Harlan) is from the Pleistocene of Kentucky; O. 

 cavifrons (Leidv) is recorded from deposits of the same age in 

 Indian Territory, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska, 

 and both were included by Leidy in his genus Bootherium. A 

 third species is 0. appalachicolus (Rhoads), from the Pleistocene 

 of Pennsylvania. 



There are few records of the finding of the remains of Ovibos 

 in Pleistocene deposits in Canada. Dr. George M. Dawson, in 

 his Summary Report for 1898, p. 19 A, mentions the finding of 

 portions of a skull of a musk-ox in old gravel deposits (Pleisto- 

 cene) near Edmonton, Alberta. In his Report on the Klondike 

 Gold Fields, 1905, p. 29B, Mr. R. G. McConnell refers to musk- 

 ox, mammoth, buffalo, bear and mountain sheep and goat re- 

 mains in the "low level creek gravels" of the Klondike district 

 which are most probably of Pleistocene age, judging from the 

 occurrence of mam.moth bones in them. Lydekker in his Cata- 

 logue of Fossil Mammaha in the British Museum, pt. ii, 1885, p. 

 39, refers, under the heading Ovibos moschatus, to a specimen 



Communicated by permission of the Acting Director of the Geo- 

 logical Survey of Canad.a. 



