DESCRIPTION OF MAMMALIAN REMAINS FROM A ROOK 

 CREVICE IN FLORIDA. 



BY PROF. JOSEPH LEIDY. 



In a visit to Florida, last winter, Mr. Joseph Willcox obtained a small 

 but interesting collection of quaternary mammalian fossils from the vicinity 

 of Ocala, Marion Co. The fossils were discovered in a crevice of the rock 

 exposed in quarrying limestone on the property of Mr. F. M. Phillips, who 

 obligingly presented the specimens remaining in his possession to Mr. Will- 

 cox ; others having been carried away as curiosities or lost. The limestone, 

 in which was the crevice, is chalk-white, nummulitic and regarded to be of 

 oligocene age. In some masses of the rock, in a quarry of Mr. B. P. Rich- 

 ards, in the vicinity, Mr. Willcox found embedded some remains apparently 

 of a Zeuglodon or perhaps of a Sqiialodon. The fragments consist of a 

 portion of a mandible with the much mutilated traces of a couple of large 

 two-fanged molar teeth, part of the crown of a large conical tooth with 

 strongly rugose enamel, and portions of several immature vertebrae with 

 fragments of a detached epiphysis of a centrum. The remains are too im- 

 perfect to determine positively to what species or even genus they may 

 belong. 



The fossils from the limestone rock crevice submitted to examination 

 consist of remains of a species of Horse, Llama, Sabre-tooth Tiger and an 

 Elephant. They present the usual appearance of fossils from dry caves, 

 being well preserved in form, not rolled or water-worn, and white and friable 

 from the loss of ossein. Other specimens were lost, as usual under such 

 circumstances, leading to the sad reflection that many similar records of the 

 past, after having been sealed up and preserved for ages, on discovery are 

 destroyed through ignorance of the finder. 



The most interesting of the fossils are fragments of the skull of a Sabre- 

 tooth Tiger, which was about as large as the existing Tiger of Asia. The 

 two fragments comprise the nearly complete cranium and the greater por- 

 tion of one side of the face retaining the alveoli, as represented in fig- 

 ure I, plate III. The skull when found appears to have been entire and 

 contained the teeth, including the characteristic long canine, but 

 these unluckily were extracted by the finder and distributed as relics. 



