Page Eight 



EVOLUTION 



June, 1937 



footprints which the cowboys follow on the range today. 

 The dinosaurs of a half-billion years ago left their tracks 

 on the muddy bottom lands. The next flood covered them 

 with mud and thus preserved them in the rocks through 

 the long intervening ages. .\X one point, the tracks of three 

 different animals were found crossing each other- — we called 

 it "Dinosaur Junction." 



Other fossils have been found in the higher layers, but 

 the record in that region stops at the Eocene in the be- 

 ginning of Cenozoic ( late life) time. Since the Pink Cliff 

 limestone was laid down, the entire region has been up- 

 lifted from near sea-le\el to its present elevation. During 

 the period of uplift, streams of water have been at work 

 wearing away this sedimentary material, cutting washes, 

 gorges and canyons, and leaving the edges of the layers 

 exposed to view. The Colorado River has cut deepest, 

 having reached the bottom of this three-miles of sediment- 

 ary material. Even though there is only a mile or more 

 of the material left at the Grand Canyon to show, it is 

 believed that a good deal of the upper material once ex- 

 tended over it and was stripped away before the canyon 

 as we know it now was carved. 



Zion Canyon, cut b\' the Virgin River, a tributary of 

 the Colorado, is three-fourths of a mile deep at its mouth. 

 But this is only a small part of the stream's work. 



for it is practically certain that much of the upper mile 

 of rock layers formerly extended over Zion Canyon and 

 was removed b}' the processes of erosion before the present 

 can\on came into being. Bryce Can\on has been cut 

 about 1,300 feet deep through the topmost la\er by means 

 of temporary streams produced by storms without the 

 aid of a permanent stream of water. 



The time scale revealed by the region, although not 

 complete, indicates a tremendous period for the history of 

 the earth. There are three phases which must be taken 

 into consideration: 1st, time enough for the accumulation 

 of sediments to a depth of three miles (15,000 to 16,000 

 feetj by the natural processes of sedimentation, involving 

 all of the principal types of deposit, limestone, shale, sand- 

 stone, and conglomerate; 2nd, the lost periods of time 

 that elapsed during the unconformities: and 3rd, time 

 enough to car\e the present can\ons and wear down 

 through the three mile series. 



When viewed in the light of recent calculations of 

 earth age by the use of radium, there is little doubt that 

 the histor\' of this southern Utah -northern .Arizona region 

 must be read in terms of hundreds of millions, perhaps 

 billions, of \ears — time enough for the development of 

 the evolutionarj- changes in living things that biologists 

 recognize to ha\e occurred. 



Mammoihs and Mastodons 



Br .ALLAN BROMS 



■pVERYONE knows that mammoths and mastodons are 

 •■-' some sorts of elephants, now extinct, and probably thinks 

 them of enormous size, much bigger than living elephants, 

 though this is not true. The name "mammoth" is assumed 

 to have been given because the animal was of mammoth 

 size, but the truth is just the other way round, we call 

 things mammoth after this animal. Actually, the name 

 comes from the Tartar word "mamantu" meaning ground- 

 dweller, for the Siberian peasants found bones and even 

 flesh, but no living animals, and so concluded that these 

 must be giant moles who dug their way underground with 

 their ivory tusks, but promptly died when the>- accident- 

 ally saw the sunlight. So this name was modified and 

 adopted for scientific use. The name "mastodon" means 

 "nipple-toothed", describing its distinctive teeth. .Mam- 

 moths and mastodons are very different, the mammoth be- 

 ing a true elephant, with elephant teeth, while the masto- 

 don is just a cousin. 'Sou can always tell them apart b_\- 

 looking in their mouths. .A mastodon tooth looks like a 

 mountain range of serrated peaks, while a mammoth 

 tooth has a flattened surface crossed by narrow ridges of 

 hard enamel which stand out from the softer cement and 

 dentine which wear away faster in use, the surface being 

 thus kept rough for grinding. Besides, a mastodon tooth 

 has several roots, a mammoth tooth but one. 



Also, had you seen them in the flesh, you could easily 

 have told them apart. The mammoth was short, tall at 

 the shoulders, low at the hips, his back sloping sharply 

 rearwards. Besides he was narrow when you got a front 

 view. The mastodon was of longer build, not tall either 

 fore or aft, but very wide and broad-backed. 



We know just how they looked because we have 

 fine fossil records of them, not only bones, but flesh and 

 hide and hair, and let's not forget, pictures drawn by 



primitive man who hunted and was hunted by them. But 

 there are no live mammoths or mastodons, nor have there 

 been for thousands of years. A hundred years ago, it 

 was quite reasonable for President Jefferson, himself a 

 scientist, to look for the finding of live mastodons in the 

 then unexplored Northwest, for the fossil bones looked 

 \ery fresh, but now- that we have explored and not found 

 them, the question is settled, there are no living mam- 

 moths or mastodons. But we must discuss them separate- 

 ly, for the mastodon lived last in North .America, while 

 the mammoth lived in .Asia and Europe too. 



The first mastodon bones were found near Albany, 

 N. Y. in 1705. .A few years later Cotton Mather wrote 

 that they were the bones of a giant, quoting that "there 

 were giants on the earth in those days". In Europe too, 

 the first remains of mammoths and mastodons were hailed 

 as of giants and of saints, a more reasonable theory being 

 that they were Hannibal's elephants used in invading 

 Rome. The next mastodon finds also came from New 

 lork, for in both 1799 and 1802, C. W. Peale found fairly 

 complete skeletons. Soon they came thick and fast, from 

 other states as well, one deposit just south of St. Louis 

 yielding hundreds of individuals. Then in 1845, just fifty 

 miles north of New '\'ork City, six miles west of Newburgh, 

 the practically complete Warren skeleton was found with 

 the bones in place just as the mastodon had mired itself 

 in a swamp. It was carefully removed, the parts wired 

 together and then exhibited, first as a travelling show, then ^^ 

 in a small Boston museum and now finally, after correct 

 remounting, at the .American Museum of Natural History. 

 .Miring in swamps and quick sands seems to have been a 

 common death for mastodons. At least that is how most 

 of them are preserved to us. 



The mammoth li\ed here too, but the best fossils are 



