74: Kansas Academy of Science. 



and sponge moss, while in the more solid ground trees and shrubs, 

 like those of the tropics, raised their heads to the sun. 



Last season the writer discovered the most complete set of lower 

 jaws of the great inferior tusked mastodon, at the Sternberg quarry. 

 The jaws miss part of the end that are united at the sympathis and 

 prolonged forward into a broad rostrum, into which the inferior 

 tusks are inserted. These tusks are absent in this specimem, 

 tliough very complete ones have been found that have fallen out of 

 their sockets, and show that they projected eighteen inches from 

 the jaw, the roots reaching back about two feet to the last molar, 

 that in this set had full possession ; the other molars had been cast 

 out. The length of the preserved jaws was two feet six and a half 

 inches. Height at condyles, fourteen inches. In the center of 

 the grinding surface of the last molar the height is nine and a half 

 inches. The length of the molar is about seven and a half inches, 

 and three and a half inches wide. The great distinguishing char- 

 acter of this first mastodon lay in the fact that only a narrow strip 

 of enamel covered the inside of the tusk, while in all the descend- 

 ants the tusks are encircled with enamel. 



The dominate life in northwestern Kansas at that time was the 

 rhinoceros, Teleoceras fossiger^ and the great land turtle, Testudo 

 {Xerohates) orthopygia Cope. As early as 1882 a large collection 

 of these turtles was made in a narrow gulch that had been carved 

 out of the sand by water on Beaver creek, near the old site of a 

 town of that name. 



A great deal of labor was required to secure specimens from the 

 Loup Fork sands. The turtle shells were scattered through sand 

 about four feet in thickness along the face of the bluff for 100 

 feet ; about six feet below was the bed-rock, on which were scat- 

 tered rhinoceros and other bones. The fact that the limbs were 

 13resent in many cases precludes the possibility of their sinking in 

 quicksand after death, as, in that case, the loose bones of the endo- 

 skeleton would have been left behind ; for the same reason they 

 could not have been brought to burial by water very long after 

 death. 



During Pliocene time, a little later, the great elephant, Elephas 

 Golumhi.! ranged in great numbers over the same region. In 1894 

 the writer discovered a large deposit of these bones, which are pre- 

 served in the University of Kansas. 



