164 Prof. O. C. Marsh—On Mastodon Americanus. 
VI.— Restoration or Mastopon Auericanus, CuvinR. 
By Professor O. C. Marsu. M.A., Ph.D., LL.D., F.G.S., Etc. 
(PLATE VIII.) 
MF\HE great abundance and good preservation of the remains of 
the American Mastodon have led to various restorations of the 
skeleton. The best known of these is that made by Prof. Richard 
Owen, in 1846, based upon a skeleton from Missouri, now in the 
British Museum.’ Another restoration was made a few years later 
by Dr. J. C. Warren, based mainly on a very perfect skeleton from 
Orange county, New York.’ This skeleton is now preserved in the 
Warren Museum in Boston. A third restoration was made by Prof. 
James Hall, from a skeleton found at Cohoes, New York, and now 
in the State Museum of Natural History, in Albany.® These restor- 
ations are all of importance, and taken together have made clear to 
anatomists nearly all the essential features of the skeleton of this 
well-known species. 
Additional discoveries have since brought to light more perfect 
specimens, one of which, now in the Yale Museum, is perhaps in 
the best preservation of any skeleton of the American Mastodon yet 
discovered, and this has been used by the writer in the restoration, 
one thirty-second natural size, given on Plate VIII. 
The position chosen in this restoration is one which seems espe- 
cially fitted to bring out the massive proportions of the animal, and, 
at the same time, to show nearly all the characteristic features of 
the entire skeleton. The animal, as thus represented was, when 
alive, about twelve feet in height, and perhaps twenty-four feet in 
length including the tusks. 
This animal was fully adult, as the last molars above and below 
are in place and somewhat worn. The epiphyses of the vertebree, 
moreover, are nearly all coossified with the centra, and in some of 
them, the sutures are obliterated. The epiphyses are also firmly 
united to the limb bones. 
The tusks were very large, and considerably divergent. There were 
no inferior tusks, and no traces of their alveoli remain. The 
penultimate and last molars are present above and below in fine 
preservation, the former considerably worn. 
Other features of this skeleton, and especially the various new 
anatomical points it discloses, will be discussed by the writer 
elsewhere. 
1 British fossil Mammals and Birds, fig. 102, p. 298, London, 1846. 
2 Description of a skeleton of the Mastodon giganteus of North America, pl. xxvii. 
Boston, 1852. 
3 Report of the New York State Cabinet of Natural History for the year 1867, 
plate vi. Albany, 1871. 
