EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 357 



Remains of the extinct mastodon have been found in 

 many different locahties in the State of Cahfornia, and 

 indeed in the Pleistocene period these animals existed all 

 over North America, with the possible exception of the 

 northeastern corner along the coast of Labrador, and farther 

 northward. In California the prevalence of the mastodon 

 remains in the Coast Ranges and along the foothills of the 

 Sierra up to an elevation of some two thousand feet indi- 

 cate that region as the habitat of the mastodon. At a 

 higher elevation than two thousand feet the bones are occa- 

 sionally met with, but there are none or scarcely any to be 

 found past the three thousand foot mark. It is along the 

 limestone bed in the vicinity of Sonora and Colombia that 

 the most numerous mastodon remains have been unearthed, 

 and cartloads of these bones have been taken from lime- 

 stone crevices at various points between Sonora and the 

 Stanislaus River. However, most of this material has been 

 lost through fires in the mining camps or has crumbled away 

 on long exposure to the outer air. In the later seventies 

 some fine mastodon skulls were still to be seen in a mining 

 camp at Sonora, and about this time occasional specimens 

 were taken to San Francisco for exhibition, but they failed 

 to elicit proper attention, and the exhibitions, as speculative 

 ventures, were not successful.* By far the greater part 

 of the remains belong to the American mastodon {Mam- 

 mut americanum) . 



The remarkable skeleton of Elephas imperator set up in 

 the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and 

 Art, at Los Angeles, California, is one of the largest known. 

 It has been assembled from the deposits found in an asphalt 

 pit at Rancho La Brea, near Wilshire Boulevard in the out- 

 skirts of Los Angeles. The height of this skeleton at the 



*J. D. Whitney, "The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California"; Mem. 

 of the Mus. of Comp. Zool. at Harvard College. Vol. VI, No. 1 (1st Pt.), Cambridge, 1879. 

 pp. 251, 252. 



