ON REPORTED PLEISTOCENE HUMAN REMAINS AT 

 VERO, FLORIDA 



THOMAS WAYLAND VAUGHAN 1 



United States Geological Survey 



Topographic relations. — Vero, a village on the Florida East 

 Coast Railway, 228 miles south of Jacksonville, in St. Lucie 

 County, 2 is situated on the surface of the Pensacola terrace, the 

 lowest and youngest of the three Pleistocene terraces recognized 

 in Florida by Matson, 3 and is about one mile west of the western 

 shore of Indian River, between which and the Atlantic Ocean lies 

 the great barrier beach of east Florida. The terrace plain presents 

 the physiographic aspect of early youth, as it is almost flat 

 and is only slightly trenched by rather indefinite drainage courses. 

 Its surface stands between 10 and 15 feet above sea-level, ex- 

 cept along an elevated barrier beach which lies some 600 or 700 

 feet west of the railroad, where the altitude may be as much as 

 10 to 15 feet higher. The human remains were found in a slight 

 depression along a drainage course across the terrace surface at 

 localities about half a mile north of Vero and between 330 and 580 

 feet west of the railroad, and were exposed as a result of the 

 excavation of the Indian River Farms Company drainage canal. 



Geologic relations. — -Dr. Sellards has in three papers 4 presented 

 detailed descriptions of the geologic section exposed along the 



1 Published by permission of the Director of the United States Geological Survey. 



2 See the map of State of Florida, scale 1/500,000, issued by the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey in 1916, and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart 

 No. 163. 



^ "Geology and Ground Waters of Florida," U.S. Geol. Survey, Water-Supply 

 Paper 319, pp. 31-3S, PL 5, J 9i3- 



4 "Discovery of Fossil Human Remains in Florida in Association with Extinct 

 Vertebrates," Amer. Jour. Sci., XLII (July, 1916), 1-18; "Human Remains and 

 Associated Fossils from the Pleistocene of Florida," Eighth Ann. Rept. Florida Geol. 

 Survey, 19 16, pp. 122-60, Pis. 15-31; "Human Remains from the Pleistocene of 

 Florida," Science, N.S., XLIV (1916), 615-17. 



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