June, 1937 



EVOLUTION 



Page Nine 



MRELtPHAS JEFFERSONII ARCHIDI5K0DON IMPERSTOR 



MAMMONTEUS PRIMIQENIU5 



ELEPHA5 INOICUS 



LOXODONTA AFRICANA 



MASTODON AMERICANU5 



from Siberia and Alaska, for there the\- are found frozen 

 into ice tiiat has not melted for thousands of \-ears. In 

 these natural refrigerators they have been kept quite in- 

 tact, so fresh that dogs eat their flesh. We know that they 

 had a heavy covering of hair and wool fitting them to 

 survive through the long, intense cold of the ice Age. 

 So we call this species the W'ooly Mammoth to distinguish 

 it from others of even larger size that roamed farther 

 south here in North .America, namely the jeffersonian 

 Mammoth and the Imperial Elephant, giant of them all. 

 The mastodon also had a hairy covering, for a golden 

 brown sample has been found. The Wooly Mammoth 

 however stuck closer to the cold edge of the melting ice 

 sheet and northern Siberia is today full of fossil ivory, so 

 full that regular prices are quoted on it in the markets 

 of the world. One of the refrigerated carcasses was found 

 in 1799 in the ice along the Lena River and what remains 

 after the dogs got done with it, is mounted in the museum 

 at Leningrad. .Another, found in 1900 at Beresovka, 

 Siberia, was largel)- saved. It had fallen into a deep pit 

 or crevasse, probablv during a blinding blizzard, had 

 broken several bones, and being too crippled to struggle 

 out. had died in the position of climbing. Even the con- 

 tents of the stomach were preserved, showing that it lived 

 on grasses and birch leaves. 



There are manv guesses \x h\ the mammoth and 

 mastodon, despite their numbers, became extinct. Their 

 intelligence and strength should have saved them. One 

 recent guess (you can guess the source) held that thev 

 were too big to get into Noah's .Ark and so were drowned. 

 .Another is that since elephant skins lack oil glands, moist- 

 ure could freeze in the hair of the Woolv Mammoth and 

 Mastodon, killing them off. But thev survived through the 

 Ice .-Xge and died when the weather became warm. .Also, 

 their southern relatives, the Jeffersonian Mammoth and 

 the Imperial Elephant, died out. Maybe some contagious 

 disease wiped out the tribe, we do not really know. 



But though we do not know wh_y they disappeared, 

 we do know something about how they began, for fossil 

 remains have been found oi their ancestors, mostlv in Asia 



and Africa. They started in Egypt with the little Moe- 

 ritherium about two feet tall who lived some tens of 

 millions of years ago in the Eocene Epoch along the River 

 Nile, spending much of his time in it. He had quite an 

 ordinar}- mouth, without trunk, but w-ith two upper and 

 two lower tusks or long canine teeth. The nearest living 

 relative is the Sea Cow or Manatee. From the very 

 ordinary Moeritherium evolved many strange mastodons 

 and elephants. .All had the rooting habit, like our pigs who 

 also develop tusks in their wild state. ,At first both the 

 lower and upper jaws and tusks grew longer. Then there 

 had to be some wav of reaching bevond them for getting 

 food back to where the mouth was. So the nose and 

 upper lip extended into a long flexible tube with a sen- 

 sitive and very deft tip to feel and handle things with. 

 Slowly through the millions of years this evolution went 

 on. the tusks and jaws and trunk getting longer. In several 

 the lower tusks become spoon-shaped or spade-shaped for 

 digging and scooping. Walter Granger recently showed 

 me one such spade from Mongolia fully a foot wide. A 

 spoon from Nebraska was four feet long. But other species 

 began to lose their long lower jaws and tusks, among them 

 Stegodon. whose teeth are a compromise between those of 

 mammoths and mastodons. Occasionally old mastodon 

 hulls hark hack to such four-tusked ancestors by showing 

 tusk remnants in their lower jaws. 



With long, heavy upper tusks and trunk, the recent 

 elephants had to have strong, short necks, so the skull 

 changed in shape and bracing to give better leverage. To 

 uphold the ponderous beast itself, the legs became mas- 

 sive pillars, set straight up and down for soliditv, sup- 

 ported by compact, tough, padded feet. For centuries the 

 ancients debated whether an elephant had leg joints, he 

 stood so sturdil>- stiflf-legged. With powerful limbs, an 

 overwhelming might, and an ever urging wanderlust, which 

 mav be just the curiosity of intelligence, he traveled the 

 world over, invaded new conditions, which made him over 

 to fit them b\- natural selection, and then generation by 

 generation died to leave the fossil record b\^ which we now 

 decipher his storv'. 



PRESSURE FROM THE PULPIT 

 RecentI}' a quotation from Hendrik Willem Van- 

 Loon's "Story of .Mankind," written on a blackboard in 

 Beech Grove school, Indianapolis, sent Rev. \'erdi .Allen, 

 Baptist preacher, on a rampage with the war cry: "Our 

 people don't want pupils taught the Darwinian theory but 

 the Genesis record." 



Principal Mann is reported to have side-stepped him 

 neatly with "Mere citing of the opinion of others does 

 not imply belief in them". While State Superintendent 

 .Murray pussyfooted as follows: "The theory of evolution 

 should not be advocated, and frankly I doubt if it is ad- 

 vocated in any school in Indiana." No comment needed. 



Help us to offset this pressure from the pulpit bv send- 

 ing EN'OLUTION to every public and school library in 



Indiana that will accept it. Five hundred dollars will do 

 it. Send a check to help Enlighten Indiana. 



SYMPOSIUM ON EARLY MAN 

 -AN INTERN.ATIONAL SYMPOSIUM on Early Man 

 was held .March 1 7th to 20th under the auspices of the 

 Philadelphia .Academy of Science. Manv world-renowned 

 anthropologists, archeologists, geologists and anatomists 

 contributed to a summation of present knowledge regard- 

 ing ancient man. We hope to present some of this inter- 

 esting material to our readers in an earl>- issue. 



Of course, in such a gathering of scientists the fact 

 of evolution is taken for granted, and the fundamentalist 

 viewpoint of special creation is no longer considered, or 

 even mentioned. Does this mean anything to our funda- 

 mentalist friends and the school boards that thev control? 



