﻿NO. 20 RECOGNITION OF PLEISTOCENE FAUNAS HAY 1 3 



What conclusions are we to draw from the facts presented re- 

 garding the horses, the tapirs, and the extinct bisons? To the 

 writer it seems almost necessary to believe that the species of Equus, 

 of Tapirus, and of Bison, except Bison bison, had become extinct 

 before the Wisconsin ice-sheet had retired from its southernmost 

 limit. Here was a tract of country stretching from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific, finely adapted to support a varied fauna, but, if horses 

 and tapirs, and bisons existed, they came up to the border of this 

 fertile land, and, excepting the living bison, did not venture to 

 pass this border. To them it was a dead-line ; if, again, they ex- 

 isted. 



To the writer, basing his opinion especially on what the maps 

 shown above have revealed, it appears justifiable to make a distinc- 

 tion between the fauna which occupied this country when first vis- 

 ited by white men, which may be called the Recent fauna, and that 

 which immediately preceded it. The latter included many genera 

 and species that are found in the Recent fauna, but it embraced also 

 a species of megalonyx, the American mastodon, at least two species 

 of elephants, the giant beaver, one or two extinct genera of pec- 

 caries, at least three extinct genera of musk-oxen, and the extinct 

 moose, Cervalces scotti. The latter belonged here, for the fine skele- 

 ton which is at Princeton University was found in swamp deposits 

 in northern New Jersey which overlie Wisconsin drift. The dis- 

 tinguishing genera of this fauna are probably better revealed in the 

 northern part of Indiana than in any other State, and especially in 

 the valley of the Wabash River and its tributaries. The beds con- 

 taining these fossils hold the same relation to the Wisconsin drift 

 that each of the interglacial deposits holds to the drift sheet under- 

 lying it. Inasmuch as it has this definite position and, moreover, 

 contains a fauna marked by a number of extinct genera, it seems 

 to be worthy of a distinctive name. It is proposed, therefore, to call 

 these deposits, consisting mostly of the fillings of old marshes, 

 ponds, and lakes, the Wabash beds, and the fauna contained therein, 

 the Wabash fauna. As the type locality of this formation, the writer 

 choses the region about 4 miles east of Fairmount, Grant County, 

 Indiana. Here in a drainage canal which empties into the Missis- 

 sinewa River, a tributary of the Wabash, at a depth of from 12 to 

 15 feet, was found the nearly complete skeleton of Elephas prim- 

 igenius which is mounted in the American Museum at New York. 

 Somewhere in the neighborhood was found the partial skeleton of 

 Castoroides which is in the Field Museum of Natural History, 



