BONE CAVE AT PORT KENNEDY. 



273 



was pressed into a compact mass. When transported these fragments must have 

 \)2en already small, since if otherwise entombed more earth would have intervened 

 in the interstices. 



But continued excavation showed that the bones had suffered not only before 

 but after their burial. We saw this in the twisting into fragments of jaws, which 

 still lay piece against piece, in the distortion of carapaces of tortoises, and in the 

 flattening of twigs and of boughs of trees (sometimes apparently squeezed from an 

 original thickness of one to that of one-quarter of an inch), testifying to a down 



settling of the mass of 

 debris which had played 

 havoc with such larger 

 and softer remains as had 

 escaped earlier jostling. At 

 B, 5-12, several jaw frag- 

 ments with teeth, which 

 must have reached their 

 position as parts of one man- 

 dible, had been squeezed 

 away from each other at 

 various angles, and at C, 

 8-9, the long incisor of a 

 rodent proved post-burial 

 pressure, by penetrating 

 for a quarter of an inch 

 the bone of a large mam- 

 mal just above it, while at 

 various points limb bones 

 had been broken by pres- 

 sure after deposition, since their fragments had tilted out of level at the point of 

 fracture. 



In the work of rescue we undermined the bank with pick-axes. We cut out 

 blocks with a chisel, prying loose with a crow-bar large masses and splitting these 

 with trowels. Digging carefully with knives and trowels under and around pre- 

 ferred jaws and bones, we cased them, while still protruding like knobs from the 

 bank, in matrices of plaster-of-paris fortified with sticks, to be opened after drying 

 in the laboratory. Without this continual smearing of plaster upon masses of mud 

 and bones, we had striven in vain, with fragments wet and soft as over-ripe pears, 

 to save, for example, such specimens as the upper and lower tapir jaws, Tapirus 

 hay sit, with full complement of teeth ; a skull and jaw fragment of the fossil bear, 

 Ursus haplodon (see fig. 4.); the lower jaw of the peccary, Mylohyns; the lower 

 jaw of the wolverine, Gido luscus, or the crushed upper and lower jaw showing 

 full dentition of the sabre-toothed tiger, Smilodon gracilis, illustrated in Professor 

 Cope's paper. 



Fig. 3 (size one-third).— AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE METHOD OF 

 RECOVERING FOSSILS AT PORT KENNEDY. 



Mass of fossil-bearing earth, granulated bone, and hone fragments, enclosed 

 in plaster-of-paris, as it appealed mi removal from the Port Kennedy bone 

 fissure at B, 5, 6. The plaster covers that part of the matrix first seen 

 against the wet face of the exposure. 



Now dry, the matrix has not yet been cut away from the bones resting 

 inside, and whose lower portion, as originally seen, touch the plaster crust. 



35 JOURN. A. N. S. PHILA., VOL. XI. 



