1897.] THE FOSSIL SLOTH AT BIG BONE CAVE, TENX. 39 



tative of a category of tapirs, peccaries, horses and mastodons, 

 which had flourished in the time called Pleistocene, at an epoch 

 one geological degree back of the present, or, according to the last 

 of several geological time estimates, about 30,000 years ago. 



Here, then, to return to the particular specimens presented by me, 

 (See Figs. 5-14 and 19) are bones which, from the point of view 

 of anthropology, might be presumed to be very ancient, older than 

 the pyramids of Egypt or the oldest inscribed brick yet found in 

 Babylonia, but which, it must be confessed, appear quite modern. I 

 removed them with my own hands out of the floor earth of Big Bone 

 cave, Van Buren county, Tenn., in last May (1896), while conduct- 

 ing thither an expedition for the Department of American and Prehis- 

 toric Arch?eology of the University of Pennsylvania.^ Strange 

 to say many have articular cartilage clinging to them. Most have 

 been gnawed by small rodents while still retaining their juices, and 

 for these reasons and because, as we shall see later, they form part 

 of a set of bones doubtless of one and the same animal, obtained 

 from Big Bone cave first in 1835, next in 1884, and now last by 

 me in 1896, they may be classed as pertaining to the most modern - 

 looking if not the most interesting series of remains of the extinct 

 animal ever found in the United States. In this case, since the 

 position and the association of the other specimens alluded to 

 of 1835 ^^^ T884, previously found in the same cave by farmers, 

 were not observed, the bones here shown constitute the only 

 remains of this Big Bone cave animal, whose relation to surround- 

 ing facts bearing upon their age has been studied so as to furnish 

 some reasonable conclusion as to how and when the creature got 

 into the cave, and whether or not it was a contemporary of the 

 Indian in the Southern mountains. 



In the first place, it should be said, that the bones did not come 

 from a human culture layer, nor from a den of large carnivora. 

 Neither were they found at a site where the cave explorer would have 

 chosen to dig, but rather at a spot where all the conditions of explo- 

 ration seemed unfavorable. They were rescued from one of the sub- 

 terranean galleries at the last moment after the whole cave had been 

 rifled for saltpetre. 



About one mile from the left bank of Caney Fork river, and 



^ I take pleasure in returning tlie thanks of the Departmant and of myself to our 

 Vice-President Dr. William Pepper, who alone defrayed the expenses of this expedi- 

 tion. 



