QUATERNARY 



669 



The mastodon was abundant in America, possibly as abundant as 

 the buffalo (Clarke) ; 413 specimens of mammoths and mastodons 

 have been reported from North America, of which 330 are mastodons. 

 The mastodon ranged over the whole of North America. Both lived 

 in America after the disappearance of the ice sheets, as is proved by 

 the burial of their remains in peat bogs on top of the latest drift. 

 The finding of charcoal (perhaps the result of lightning) beneath a 

 mastodon skeleton in New York, and charcoal and pottery at the same 

 level in the same bog, suggests the possibility that man and the mas- 

 todon were contemporaneous in America. Drawings upon ivory 



Fig. 577. — Model of mastodon. (Restoration by C. R. Knight under direction of 

 Prof. H. F. Osborn. Copyright, American Museum of Natural History.) 



and sketches on cave walls of the mammoth prove, without question, 

 that in Europe man had seen mammoths. Carcasses of the mammoth 

 have been found frozen in the ice in Siberia, where they were so per- 

 fectly preserved in this cold storage that the body of one, at least, 

 furnished food for dogs, and perhaps even for man, several thousands 

 of years after its death. 



The distribution of the elephant tribe in the New World at that 

 time proves that land connections must have existed between Asia 

 and North America, and between North and South America. 



REFERENCES FOR MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS 



Hutchinson, H. N., — Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days, pp. 270-282. 



Lucas, F. A., — Animals of the Past, pp. 177-219. 



Lull, R. S., — Evolution of the Elephant: Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. 25, 1908, pp. 181-212 



