THE FOSSIL MAMMAL COLLECTION 



BY 



H. C. STETSON 



Accession No. i in the register of the Museum of Comparative Zo- 

 ology happens to have been a fossil mammal. Other collections in 

 the Museum have subsequently outstripped this division of the 

 palaeontological department, both in size and in value, but the 

 distinction remains. On August 14, 1849, Professor Louis Agassiz 

 arose before a meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science in Harvard Hall and described a tusk, a tooth, some 

 foot bones and a rib of a fossil elephant found during the construc- 

 tion of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad at Mt. Holly, Vermont, 



The first large collections were made by Garman and Clifford, 

 who were sent on expeditions into the Bad Lands by Alexander 

 Agassiz. In the early days of collecting in our west, a common 

 method was to drive around in a wagon and pick up specimens 

 which had already weathered out. Digging was at a minimum. In 

 spite of these crude methods much material of importance was 

 added, chiefly from the White River, including many specimens 

 which later became types. On the 1880 expedition Garman dis- 

 covered, in the Pleistocene of Nebraska, the skeleton of a ground 

 sloth which is still one of the most perfect ever found in North 

 America. Somewhat later C. H. Sternberg collected considerable 

 rhinoceros material from the Pliocene of Kansas. From that time 

 down to the first of the Schlaikjer expeditions in 1925 practically no 

 material was received from the rich Tertiary faunas of our west. 



In 1887 Alexander Agassiz bought the Rossignol collection, which 

 contains some of the choicest material ever acquired. This comprises 

 many beautiful specimens from the Eocene phosphorites of the Paris 

 Basin. Most of the specimens are extraordinarily preserved, and can 

 never be duplicated because the quarries have been destroyed in the 

 process of mining gypsum. The European Tertiary is further repre- 

 sented by three major collections, the Duval, Bronn and Eser, as 



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