392 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



possesses a skeleton of Elephas primigenius, the American 

 mammoth. This was found near Jonesboro, Indiana, in 

 1903, and one of its most striking features is the complete 

 incurvature and crossing of the tusks, the longer of which 

 measures 12 ft. 4J in. along the outside curve, and has a 

 greatest circumference of 22 in. They are considerably in- 

 filtrated but still retain much of their resiliency. 



The largest mammoth tusks in the collection, and among 

 the largest ever found, are from a specimen of Elephas im- 

 perator, the Imperial mammoth, from Victoria, Texas, be- 

 longing to the late Pleistocene Age. The more nearly com- 

 plete of the pair measures 13 ft. 6 in. along the outside curve, 

 thus considerably exceeding in length the longest of the 

 elephant tusks of to-day; the greatest circumference is 23 in.* 

 These tusks have completely lost their elasticity. This mam- 

 moth has a height of 10 ft. 6 in., while the gigantic skeleton 

 of Elephas meridionalis now in the Paris Museum attains a 

 height of 12 ft. 6J in.f The tusks of the Warren mastodon, 

 found near Newburg, New York, are badly damaged but ap- 

 pear to have measured 8 ft. 6 in. in length. 



It is worthy of note that no ivory objects have been found 

 in the tombs or other deposits of the American aborigines, 

 and this may be explained by the probability that, in the 

 territory of the United States at least, the mammoth had 

 passed away before the appearance of man. A number of 

 American archaeologists, among them Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, 

 have never observed carved ivory or any kind of mastodon 

 bones among the deposits left by the ancient American In- 

 dians. 



A famous pair of fossil tusks may be seen in the Petro- 

 grad Zoological Museum, one of them measuring 12 ft. 9.93 



*Personal communication of W. D. Matthew, Curator of the Natural History Museum. 

 tHenry Fairfield Osbom, "A Mounted Skeleton of the Columbian Mammoth," Bull. 

 Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol XXHI, Art. XII, pp. 255-257; March 30, 1907. 



