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[From the "Mining and Scientific Press," San Francisco, August 6, 1888. 



THE CARSON FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS. 



Heport of Prof. Geo. Davidson, President California Academy of Sciences. 



UPON representing to the Board of Trustees 

 that more footprints had been laid bare within 

 the State prison limits near Carson, Mr. Gibbes 

 and myself were authorized by the Board to pro- 

 ceed to Carson and make an examination. By 

 arrangement, Prof. W. P. Blake, of Yale Col- 

 lege, accompanied us, and promised to make a 

 report of his views. But the work of all was 

 in great measure inseparable, except that Mr. 

 Gibbes remained one or two days beyond our 

 time, in order to make some casts. The descrip- 

 tions of all can therefore differ but slightly. It 

 is left, however, to each to draw his own con- 

 clusions. A detailed description of the locality 

 and of the peculiarities need not be introduced, 

 because they have already been in great meas- 

 ure presented to the Academy by Messrs. Hark- 

 ness, Le Conte and Gibbes. What strikes the 

 visitor at first is the fact that the friable ma- 

 terials of the two "floors" heretofore referred to 

 are liable to dislocation and 



Destruction by Weathering, 



Cleaning, and the ordinary traffic of working 

 convicts and visitors over them. And I must 

 confess to some disappointment in not seeing 

 more marked characteristics of the footprints 

 on the lower floor, because in the published 

 drawings there is no varying degrees of desig- 

 nation to footprints that are deeply imprinted, 

 or to those that are barely traceable. Of this, 

 however, I shall speak hereafter. But I was 

 very strongly impressed with the vividness of 

 some of the impressions on the upper floor, and 

 of their teachings; and fearing that they would 

 in time lose their great value in the earth's 

 natural history, I made arrangements with Mr. 

 Frank Bell, the Warden of the State prison, to 

 have them reproduced by making casts of the 



more important. And here I wish to express 

 the thanks of the party to Mr. Bell for his 

 prompt arid intelligent assistance, and for his 

 his generous entertainment during our stay. 

 To him and his officers we owe acknowledg- 

 ment for their interest in searching for and pre- 

 serving every probable footprint, fossil shell, 

 fragment of bone or tusk, and casts of pine cones. 



Mammoth Remains and Rain Drops. 



One of the first things to strike the eye upon 

 entering the prison precincts, is the thin layer 

 or stratum of hard clay immediately over a thirty- 

 foot stratum of fine blue sandstone. On this clay 

 layer are sharp and deep rain drops or hail 

 markings, which are found even in the faint 

 impresses of a mammoth's feet, leading to a point 

 where the same surface is not marked by such 

 rain drops, but is irregularly smooth, as if lain 

 upon by a huge body some twelve feet in ex- 

 treme length by about three feet in greatest 

 width. The foot prints are eighteen inches in 

 diameter, and I did not notice any beyond this 

 peculiarly marked spot. In the history of the 

 earlier excavations it is said that a mass of 

 bones was found at this spot, and removed as 

 if of no merit. 



And it is also reported that ten years since 

 there was found, at a locality not accurately 

 known, an elephant tusk, or a part of a tusk, 

 which was ten inches in diameter at the base, 

 seven and one-half feet long to the point, which 

 was the thickness of a man's wrist and turned up. 



Megatheroid Footprints 

 The So-called Man. 



But leaving the fainter and more doubtful 

 marks and tracks which one soon learns to 

 trace out and identify, I come to the two 



