480 THE AGE OF MAMMALS 



It would be natural to suppose "that these remains were of animals 

 attracted by the salt deposits at this locality, but the waterworn and broken 

 condition of the bones, as well as the entire scattering of the skeletons, 

 indicates that the remains were assembled through floods. It is remarkable 

 that no carnivorous animals were reported with the original discovery. 



Cha/raderistic Mid-Pleistocene Mammals of the Second Fauna 



Mastodons. — The kno^\^l geographic range of the American mastodon 

 extends over the entire United States northward to Lake Winnipeg and 

 British Columbia, with a single find reported in Alaska and two finds 

 reported in Nova Scotia. East of the Hudson and of Lake Champlain it 

 is rare; thus very few specimens have been found in New England. In 

 New York the geographic and geologic distribution has been most carefully 

 examined by Clarke ; ^ he finds no evidence of the existence of mastodons 

 before the Glacial period ; they first appear in New York State in what is 

 known as the pre- Wisconsin Interglacial (see p. 444). The time of their 

 disappearance or extinction seems to have been nearly coincident with the 

 melting and recession of the ice floes, glacial lakes, and glacial streams, 

 in other words, post-Glacial times. Mastodon and E. columbi remains are 

 found in surface deposits above the latest glacial drift in Indiana and Ohio, 

 and according to the opinion of some observers (Brown) these genera ex- 

 isted in the Central States long after glacial influence. In the western part 

 of New York the remains are found imbedded in old glacial lake terraces 

 caused by the damming back of ice floes. In eastern and southern New York 

 remains are invariably found in more or less completely drained swamps and 

 peat bogs, separated by narrow rocky divides, which apparently formed the 

 chief lines of north and south migration of these great quadrupeds. That 

 these animals survived to a late stage in post-Glacial history and were con- 

 temporaneous with man is especially indicated by the mastodon excavated 

 at Attica, New York, by Clarke in 1887 {op. cit., p. 864); beneath the bones 

 of this skeleton were found several pieces of charcoal. In another part of 

 the same swamp, under four feet of muck and one foot below the level 

 of the bones, was found a considerable quantity of charcoal with broken 

 pottery. 



As compared with the mammoth, the mastodon (Figs. 209 and 210) is 

 distinguished by its low forehead, its short, massive limbs, enormously broad 

 pelvis, the height at the shoulders not exceeding 9 ft. (2.70 m.) to 9 ft. 6 in. 

 It is probable that it was clothed with hair, with an undercoating of wool. 

 In the only instance in which hair has been discovered it is described as 

 coarse, long, and brown. The greatest length attained by the tusks is ten 

 feet, the average in full-grown specimens being seven to eight feet. The 



1 Clarke, J. M., Mastodons of New York. A^. F. State Mus., Bull. 69, Palceontol. 9, 

 Nov., 1903, pp. 921-933. See also Lucas, Animals before Man in North America, New York, 

 1902. 



