PLEISTOCENE OF EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND NORTH AMERICA 463 



.Platijgonus (compressus) leptorhinus were found lying close together as though 

 a hertl of the animals had been overcome by some sudden catastrophe. 

 They lay about nine feet below the surface, with heads directed toward 

 the southwest, the heads of the hinder lying upon the posterior parts of the 

 more anterior ones, and the bones all or nearly all in the position they had 

 been at the time of the animals' death. This crowding together would in- 

 dicate that the animals were overtaken either by a dust storm, a snowstorm, 

 or a blizzard, just as herds of sheep are found at the present time. 



^Sternberg's elephant bed,' also in Logan County, Kansas, contains 

 numerous remains of the Columbian mammoth {E. columbi) , a large species 

 of wolf {Conis), as well as a smaller canid of about the size of a coyote. 



Fig. 202. — The Lower Pleistocene peccaries of North America of the genus tlntygonus. 

 After original by Charles R. Knight in the American Museum of Natural History. 



Twelve-mile Creek, Kansas (Fig. 194, 20). — On this tributary of the 

 Smoky Hill River has been discovered the richest deposit of the Pleistocene 

 of Kansas. In the blue-gray layers directly underlying the recent plains 

 layers are recorded remains of several species of mammals, including Elephas 

 columbi, Platijgonus compressus, Bison occidentalis. The stratum contain- 

 ing the bison was about two feet in thickness and composed of fine silty 

 material of bluish-gray color. The bone bed when cleared off was about 

 ten feet square, and contained the skeletons of five or six adult bison, of 

 two or three younger ones, together with a foetal skeleton within the pelvis 

 of one of the adults.^ The animals evidently all perished together. In 



' Williston, S. W., On the Occurrence of an Arrow-Head with Bones of an Extinct 

 Bison. Trans. Internal. Congr. Americanists, 1902, pp. 335-337. 



