150 Cincinnati Society 0/ Natural History. 



"RIVERSIDE SKULL." 

 By A. J. Howe, M. D. 



(Read, Dec. 4. 1888.) 



At the November meeting of the Cincinnati Society of Natural 

 History were exhibited two fossil specimens, the one being a 

 human cranium, and the other a part of an elephantine tusk in a 

 fragile state. Both relics were unearthed two or three miles down 

 the river by workmen quarrying gravel for railroad purposes at 

 Riverside ; and were cared for by Dr. Kusnick of that place. He 

 reports that the "remains" were encased in coarse gravel — the 

 ijkuU was found in the first cut made in the terrace north of the 

 railway. It rolled down with a mass of gravel and clay, rendering 

 it impossible to decide upon the exact position of its original bed. 

 The tusk was found in the second cut, and at an equally uncertain 

 depth. It had lost its character as ivory ; and was too brittle to be 

 handled without breakage. A sharp cur/e near its apex, together 

 with its great size at the base, indicates that the (.lental product 

 belonged to a mastodon. An elephant's tusk is less curved toward 

 the point. 



The cranium was fragmentary, yet the walls of the brain- 

 case are well preserved. The specimens were entombed in 

 river drift or wash, yet at a point too high to be reached by recent 

 or modern inundations. The pebbly bank in which they rested 

 was deposited when the Ohio flowed at a higher level than it does 

 at present. The pile of gravel in which they were found constitutes 

 the middle one of three ridges the river has developed in its 

 washings through a series of centuries. The "bottcnn,' or lower 

 portion of Cincinnati is on the first terrace ; a plateau sixty feet 

 higher, on which most of the city is built, has been called the 

 ^'second terrace;" and the high banks above may be termed the 

 "third terrace." The first terrace is subject to annual overflow. 

 The river has evidently cut its way down to its present channel, 

 the rate of erosion being estimated at a foot in a century. The 

 •cutting process may have been more rapid at an early period of the 

 history of the Ohio Valley. 



