1923] CRABB, A FOSSIL ELEPHANT 173 



This, it is said, is produced by the small size of the opening be- 

 tween the leaves which causes the light that enters to form an inverted 

 image of the source of light, in this case, a small portion of the sun's 

 disc. All other shadows were distorted; straight lines appearing as 

 curved ones and projecting points being hooked into little crescents. 

 The fingers on one's hand, for example, were all stretched outward 

 and upward looking like a row of long thin hooks. 



In a few minutes these appearances began to fade away and gradu- 

 ally the shadow moved off the face of the sun, permitting the light to 

 become stronger and stronger. By 2:30, only approximately one- 

 quarter of the sun was still covered and daylight had returned, al- 

 though it was nearly an hour before the sun's disc was again entirely 

 free. 



A FOSSIL ELEPHANT OF OKLAHOMA 



By E. D. Crabb«' 



The principal point for attention in exhuming a large fossil mammal, 

 is to get the bones out of the ground in such a way that they may be 

 reassembled, and the beast's skeletal form thus preserved and ex- 

 hibited, or kept for study. This, however, was not to be the case 

 with the Oklahoma elephant, for it was practically worthless for dis- 

 play or anatomical study. Although numbers of fossils of prehistoric 

 elephant-like animals have been found in Oklahoma, so far as known 

 nothing more than souvenirs in the form of pieces of the larger bones, 

 tusks or teeth, have been preserved. This is due, chiefly, to the fact 

 that remains of these giants are found in rather shallow gravels and 

 are neither petrified nor carbonized, hence the bones are nearly al- 

 ways in an advanced state of disintegration when discovered. In the 

 northern states conditions seem to have been much more favorable 

 for the preservation of these large mammals, for here most of the speci- 

 mens are removed from a bed of peat or other oozy mud which has 

 excluded the air and preserved the bones in good condition by the 

 process of carbonization. The task of exhuming the skeleton of any 

 fossil elephant in a condition to be exhibited, is quite an undertaking. 

 In removing the famous Peale mastodon, near Newburg, New York, 

 twenty-six workmen and a considerable outlay of rather elaborate 

 machinery, for that day and time, were employed. Although condi- 

 tions were different in this case, a considerable task confronted the 

 writer when he responded to a hurried phone call from President 



*" Associate Lecturer, Milwaukee Public Museum. 



