C. Schuchert and R. S. Lull — Mammut Americanum. 321 



Art. XXVII. — Mammut Americanum in Connecticut ; by 

 Charles Schuchert. With a note on the Farmington 

 specimen by Richard S. Lull. 



[Contributions from the Paleontological Laboratory, Peabody Museum, 

 Yale University, New Haven, Conn., U. S. A.J 



Introduction. — The unearthing of good mastodon bones 

 anywhere is worth noting, and when a line skeleton is found, 

 and especially in Connecticut, the discovery is all the more 

 important. In addition, the latest find can be somewhat 

 directly connected with the vanishing of the Wisconsin ice 

 sheet, the last glacial episode of the Pleistocene. During the 

 past century mastodon bones have been discovered in Connect- 

 icut but five times, the last one found preserving more of the 

 skeleton than all the previous ones combined. Sooner or later 

 these occurrences will assist in the formulating of a more 

 detailed history of the Glacial Period, a time as yet unravelled 

 and unmarked by the successive faunas and floras that inhab- 

 ited North America during this age of decidedly changing 

 climatic conditions. As yet we know but little of this life, 

 and consequently the chronology of the Pleistocene in Amer- 

 ica thus far depends solely upon the physical characters of the 

 deposits and the topography of the period. 



Previous finds. — (1) The earliest record of the finding of 

 mastodon bones in Connecticut dates from previous to 1828, 

 when "some remains of the mammoth were found in Sharon," 

 Litchfield county, near the New York State line.* Nothing 

 more is known of this discovery nor of what has become of 

 the bones. 



(2) Silliman states that while excavating the Farmington 

 canal in the summer of 1828 there were found near Cheshire 

 " three or four large molar teeth of the mammoth " in gravel 

 but a few feet under ground. Some of the teeth are said to 

 have been much worn and therefore were of an old animal. 

 It appears that all of them except one were broken up at the 

 time of their excavation, and that the remaining tooth was pre- 

 sented to Yale College by Edward Hitchcock (loc. cit.). This 

 is an uncut second lower molar of Mammut americanum (Yale 

 Museum catalogue number 11985). The three crowns are well 

 preserved and but little mineralized, as the tooth was found in 

 a more or less dry gravel. 



(3) In 1833, while a canal was being dug for the New 

 Britain Knitting Company in New Britain, through a pond 

 which then covered what is now the corner of Elm and Church 



*This Journal, xiv, 187, 1828 ; also xivii, 166, 1835. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XXXVII, No. 220.— April, 1914. 

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