A WELL-PRESERVED MAMMOTH TUSK TAKEN FROM THE BOTTOM OF A FORTY-FOOT SHAFT 



PREHISTORIC ANIMALS OF 



ALASKA 



How the Search for Gold Sometimes Reveals Huge Ivory Tusks 

 and Bones of Mammals Long Extinct 



BY F. H. CHASE 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR 



AR away in the frozen 

 wilds of Alaska, thou- 

 sands of ambitious, stur- 

 dy miners are delving 

 underground, some reap- 

 ing rich harvests of virgin 

 gold, others being dis- 

 heartened by the paucity 

 of their findings, but 

 both from time to time 

 unwittingly contributing 

 to science additional 

 knowledge of colossal animals that ages ago 

 roamed over the earth, exceeding in size 

 the largest known elephants of to-day. 



The accompanying illustrations were 

 produced from photographs of a single tusk 



and of a skull with the horns attached, both 

 of which were found about forty feet below 

 the surface in frozen gravel on Cleary Creek, 

 Fairbanks Mining District, Alaska. 



Fairbanks is named for our Vice-Presi- 

 dent, and is destined to become the great 

 mining metropolis of the American side, as 

 Dawson City, in the Klondike, has become 

 in Canadian territory. 



This tusk belonged to a mammoth, an 

 animal which scientists claim became ex- 

 tinct about or shortly after the time man 

 made his appearance on earth, which fact is 

 substantiated by the finding in Western 

 Kansas of bones in which were imbedded 

 stone arrow heads. 



The weight of the tusk was estimated at 



