MASTODONS OF NEW YORK 



A LIST OF DISCOVERIES OF THEIR REMAINS 1705-1902 



COMPILED BY JOHN M. CLARKE 



The effort has been made to render this list complete, though it 

 is quite probable that finds have been made which have never 

 been recorded, doubtless some which have not been recognized 

 as mastodons. In most instances the bones have gone into public 

 and private museums, but some that have left the State may also 

 have failed of record. 



We present a list of about 60 of these occurrences. 



It is of interest in more than one particular. Forty years ago 

 the plains of the West and Southwest swarmed with immense 

 herds of the buffalo, whose bones left on the ground have gone as 

 completely as have their bodies. The dry air and arid soil have 

 reduced to dust millions of these skeletons. In the moist and 

 cold climate of the postglacial East where the mastodon must have 

 traversed New York in much the same abundance as the buffalo 

 did the West, the watersoaked soil has preserved now and again 

 a skeleton of this race. Not every Mastodon americanus 

 ended his days in a peat bog. 



It is to be noted that these occurrences, specially when con- 

 siderable parts of the skeleton have been found, are in swamps 

 and bogs of flood plains and beaches which, in the high water 

 period succeeding the ice, were river bottoms. The fall of the 

 water, with other conditions, reduced these bottoms to pools on 

 which vegetation gradually encroached, but neither they them- 

 selves, nor their contents can be of very ancient date. We may 

 not safely deny the presence of the mastodon here during the 

 early period of high water, but we may conclude that he remained 

 to a comparatively recent date, when the floods had begun their 

 retreat to their present confines. 



Worthy of notice also is the distribution of these skeletons. In 

 two regions of the State they have proved specially numerous. 

 Orange county leads as the home of mastodon remains, with a 

 record of 24 skeletons. The lower Hudson valley counties, Sulli- 

 van, Orange, Ulster and Greene afford 34 records. The region 

 covered by Monroe, Ontario, Genesee, Livingston, Orleans and 

 Wyoming counties records 14 skeletons. These two regions were 



