234 LIFE OF THE PLEISTOCENE 



Neohipparion gratu/mP* Camelops kansanus? 



Eqtiits complicatus Elephas colnmbi 



Equus niobrarensis 



4. Kansas 



The Kansan ice sheet overran a small part of northeastern Kansas. Be- 

 neath this till sheet the remains of vertebrates have been found which are 

 evidently referable to the Aftonian stage. Lucas 66 gives the following reference 

 to an extinct bison from this area: Millwood, Leavenworth County, 25 feet 

 below the surface. Savage 67 has described a fossiliferous horizon in Douglas 

 County southwest of Lawrence, near the Wakarusa River, which is 

 certainly referable to the Aftonian. It is greatly to be regretted that the mus- 

 sel (muscle) shells were not identified as to species. Of this deposit Savage 

 says "The (mastodon) jaw was found in what was once the bottom of a fresh 

 water lake or estuary, which extended for several miles both up and down the 

 creek; its boundaries have not yet been determined, nor perhaps ever can be 

 with exactness. That it extends out beneath the bottom lands adjoining, is 

 proven by the many springs which issue from it in different localities up and 

 down the stream, and it can be traced each way from where the jaw was found, 

 some ten or twelve miles in extent. Besides the thick layer'of muscle shells 

 which line this ancient lake-bed, we find the trunks of old trees protruding, 

 as well as small sandy concretions containing net-veined leaves within them. 

 In addition to these layers of muscle shells, old trees and concretions, we also 

 find bones of what appear to be the remains of the buffalo, antelope, elk, and 

 some other animals as yet under termined; but all in an unfossilized state. 

 This goes to prove that the animals whose bones we find along the same horizon 

 with the mastodon, and are not fossilized, did not live contemporaneously 

 with the mastodon whose jaw was found fossilized. We conclude then, that 

 the mastodon jaw, though not way-worn at all, was washed into this old lake- 

 bed after fossilization had taken place, and may be all of the animal that was 

 preserved. 



"I might also add, that Mr. M. Sayler, during last summer, explored the 

 banks of the Wakarusa for some ten or twelve miles by boat; his explorations 

 only confirm our own previously made, and added considerally to our previous 

 collection of unfossilized bones. 



"This lake-bed in which the mastodon jaw was found is about twenty-five 

 feet below the present surface of the ground. Whatever fossil treasures are in 

 this locality we cannot now determine; but so many bones have already been 

 found that we already speak of it as the Bone-bed of the Wakarusa. " 



<* a Hay, Iowa Geol. Survey, XXIII, p. 149. 

 M Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., XXI, pp. 751. 

 " Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci., VI, pp. 10-11. 



