94 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



at Irving, N. Y., in 1914 and brought to the State Museum by the 

 collector, E. R. Burmaster. The fragment was identified by W. D. 

 Matthew of the American Museum who said it belonged to an old 

 individual whose teeth were worn down to the roots and whose 

 premolars had dropped during life. The bone gives no indication 

 of having been used as an implement and it may be inferred that 

 the animal was killed in the vicinity. In August 1919, bison bones 

 were found by Alanson Skinner in the ash-beds of a prehistoric 

 Onondaga village site near Watertown in Jefferson county. The 

 remains in this case consisted of hoof and toe bones and some teeth. 



E q u u s sp. Horse 



It has not been generally conceded that a native species of 

 E q u u s persisted in eastern North America after the last (Wis- 

 consin) glaciation. Attention has been directed, however, to the 

 discovery of fragments of horse bones associated with remains of 

 the mastodon and a large bear, in a postglacial peat bog, at Monroe, 

 Orange county, in 1901. 94 The bones recovered consist of the right 

 ramus of the lower mandible containing four teeth, and the right 

 femur. They were found buried in the muck of the pond bottom 

 and their state of preservation indicates that they are of the same 

 age as the mastodon. 



W. B. Marshall, 95 in a report on a deposit of peat and marl in 

 the town of New Baltimore, Greene county, mentions the finding 

 of supposedly fossil horse teeth and states the circumstances as fol- 

 lows : " In the collections of the State Museum are nine teeth of a 

 fossil horse which were found in 1889 by Mr Bronk Van Slyke, 

 embedded in the peat in the southern lot. Dr Charles E. Beecher, 

 of Yale University, has identified them with Equus fraternus 

 Leidy." No horse teeth have been found in the collections of the 

 State Museum which are distinguishable from Equus cabal- 

 1 u s although this circumstance alone does not prove them to be 

 recent. Many horse teeth which are unquestionably early Pleisto- 

 cene, do not differ materially from those of the recent horse, and 

 their specific determination when the teeth alone are found, is often 

 impossible. 



In 1902, Mr Bronk Van Slyke sent to the New York State 

 Museum remains that are recorded as belonging to a supposed 

 Quaternary horse. The catalogue record of the specimens states that 



Clarke and Matthew, Bui. Geol. Soc. Amer., 1920, 31:204. 

 N. Y. State Mus. 45th Annual Rep't 1891, p. 46-52. 



