6o Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



the spot, those floated down by the water during spring floods, 

 were also buried in the terrace. Herz found under the mammoth 

 carcass a distinct cervine antelope skull, which could have been 

 brought there only by water. (It no doubt dropped from the allu- 

 vial layers above the thick ice, where fragments of bones were noted, 

 and in this way became mixed in the talus.) Every place where the 

 upper layers of earth are thick enough, i. e., where they have been 

 forming long enough, fossil animal remains have been able to accu- 

 mulate in large quantity. On the other hand where the alluvial 

 layers are thin, such remains are rarely found, firstly, because they 

 had not much attraction for living animals, and secondly, because 

 bones carried there could be easily washed away. 



" The finding of the mammoth in the earth layers, situated on 

 the ice, is not a reason for considering the ice and earth layers as 

 two geologically distinct strata and therefore belonging to different 

 ages. Of course the upper layers of earth have been deposited 

 after the formation of the ice, but the mammoth is a sure proof of 

 the previous formation of the ice on which its carcass has been 

 found. About this I will repeat the words of Tscherski.^" Without 

 entering into a discussion about the formation of the ice, and simply 

 accepting the explanation of Toll, Tscherski in his works says : 

 ' The old glacier which did not extend to the limits of the conti- 

 nent, but which in our opinion existed in the same region as the 

 carcasses of the rhinoceros and mammoth, would not necessarily 

 displace these coeval animals. Instead, the facts observed have per- 

 suaded us on the contrary, that these characteristic representatives 

 of the Siberian post-pliocene fauna have not hesitated from tread- 

 ing, at the first occasion, on the mass of ice, which temporarily 

 deprived them of part of their meadows.' " 



Tolmatschow remarks : " As a consequence of what I have said 

 I cannot consider the ice layers and a northern glacial transgres- 

 sion in the ' Yenissei Tundra ' as having occurred at the same time. 

 The only reasons for such a consideration are the ' marine clays 

 with glacial detritus ' in the Yenissei (delta) Tundra, the ' Stone ice ' 

 in the Anabara ' Tundra,' and the remains of mammoth in the earth 

 layers of the New Siberia Islands. Above we have already dis- 

 cussed the relations between the ice and earth layers. 



" We must not deny, of course, that the conditions, by which the 

 ice age was brought about in the northern hemisphere, have passed 



^ Beschreibung der Sammlung posttertiarer Saugethiere. Mem. de I'Acad. 

 Imp. Sc, St. Pb., VII Sen, T. XL, No. i, p. 47.3. 



