NOTICE OF SOME MAMMALIAN REMAINS FROM THE SALT MINE 



OF PETITE ANSE, LOUISIANA. 



BY PROF. JOSEPH LEIDY. 



The subject of the present communication is a collection of fossil bones 

 and teeth from the salt mine of Petite Anse Island, on the coast of 

 Louisiana. 



The fossils were presented to the Smithsonian Institution in 1883 and 

 1884, by Mr. William Crooks, of the American Salt Works, New Iberia, 

 Louisiana, and were submitted to the examination of the writer by the 

 Secretary of the Institution, the late Prof. Baird. 



Several letters accompanying the collection give the information that the 

 fossils were found while sinking an air shaft, to the salt mine, in a ravine 

 the surface of which is about 20 feet above mean tide ; the hills bounding 

 the ravine being from 20 to 50 feet higher. The bed of salt at this point is 

 from 19 to 21^ feet below the surface of the ravine and thus practically 

 about the sea level. The overlying strata consist of the following : i, super- 

 ficial sandy soil, 6 feet; 2, sands, 4 feet; 3, black earth, like that of the 

 neighboring bogs, containing fragments of potter}', 4 feet ; 4, sands, 2 feet ; 

 5, dark coarse sand and gravel, in contact with the salt bed, and varying in 

 depth from 6 inches to 2 feet according to the dip of the latter bed. In 

 this deepest layer the fossil bones together with vegetal remains were found, 

 many of them close to if not actually in contact with the salt. The bones 

 and teeth are stained chocolate brown and black, are otherwise little altered, 

 and are not rolled or water-worn. They consist of remains of Mastodo7i 

 americanus, Mylodon and of a Horse. The Mastodon remains, besides 

 several fragments of vertebrae and other bones, consist of well-preserved 

 molar teeth, the last two of the lower series. 



The remains of Mylodon consist of a mutilated malar bone, a cen'ical, 

 two thoracic and four caudal vertebrae, the distal articulation of a humerus, 

 t\vo tibiae, an ungual phalanx, and three teeth. 



The malar bone, with its three branches, nearly resembles that of Mylo- 

 don robustits, as represented in plate II. of Owen's " Description of the 

 Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth," London, 1842. 



The distal fragment of a humerus exhibits the radio-ulnar articulation, 



