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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. /H 



cene stratum, several feet in thickness and of very wide extent, which 

 is made up ahnost entirely oi shells representing numerous species 

 which can live only in hrackish or salt water. This is evidence that 

 the sea once covered this part of Florida and that in its shallow depth 

 was formed this widespread layer of shells. Later, as it slowly 

 emerged from the sea, the bone-bearing sand layer was formed upon it. 

 The mammoth bones themselves tell an interesting little story of 

 conditions which prevailed here when Florida was in the process of 

 being transformed into its present day appearance. 



Fig. 54. — North bank of Venice Company's main drainage canal, about 4 

 miles east of Venice, Florida. Location of Venice mammoth bones. Exact 

 spot of find is indicated by canvas shelter at middle-left. Arrow indicates 

 uneven line marking contact plane between fossil-bearing layer and later 

 deposits. 



In excavating these bones it was observed that they had not 

 originally lain in a natural position but had been somewhat scattered 

 about and broken before their final covering many thousands of 

 years ago. This together with the fact that they were buried in a sand 

 which contained many broken sea shells, in fact a typical beach 

 sand, suggested that although this spot is now more than four miles 

 inland, it was in that earlier time a sea beach upon which the mam- 

 moth carcass had stranded and as the flesh decayed the bones had 

 been considerably tossed about and broken by the waves. That 

 this was in realitv a sea beach at the time the bones were buried 



