The Pleistocene of North America / and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°

by Oliver Perry Hay

ILLINOIS.

(Map [17].)

1. On the line between Bond and Fayette Counties.—In 1899, Leidy (Trans. Wagner Inst., vol. II, p. 39, figure) described under the name of Equus major an equine maxilla, containing 4 premolars, sent him by A. H. Worthen, State geologist of Illinois. This maxilla had been found in a bog between Bond and Fayette counties. It was referred by Gidley (Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. XIV, p. 135, fig. 24) to Equus pectinatus Cope. The specimen is in the collection of the State museum at Springfield and has been studied by the writer, who regards it as belonging to Equus complicatus. A fossil horse-tooth found at Bigbone Lick, Kentucky, greatly resembles one of the premolars of this jaw.

The region where this jaw was found lies within the area of the Illinoian drift; and, inasmuch as the specimen was found on a bog lying on this drift, the animal must have lived after the withdrawal of the Illinoian ice-sheet. The bog deposit belonged probably to the Sangamon stage.

The writer has endeavored earnestly, but in vain, to obtain more exact details regarding the locality where the jaw was found and the depth of interment.

2. Alton, Madison County.—At a meeting of the St. Louis Academy of Science, December 4, 1882 (Trans. St. Louis Acad. Sci., vol. IV, p. LXXX), William McAdams reported he had seen the fossil tooth of a horse from near Alton. No details were added, except that all the horses he had seen from the drift were large animals, while those from the bad lands of Dakota were mostly quite small.

In the McAdams collection, an account of which will be given on page [339], is a fragment of an incisor of a horse. It has on it McAdams’s No. 25. It is doubtful that this tooth was found in the loess. All the fossils of that collection purporting to have been found in the loess are very white, while this is of a brownish color, and there is a coat of iron oxide adhering to some parts of it. This may or may not be the tooth mentioned by McAdams as above reported.

3. Greene County.—At the meeting of the St. Louis Academy of Science just referred to, Mr. McAdams stated that teeth of an extinct horse had been brought up from the bottom of a well being dug in Greene County. More exact situation and the depth of the well were not mentioned.

Both Greene and Madison counties are occupied by the Illinoian drift-sheet. The horse-teeth found in these counties might have come from Sangamon deposits; or possibly the Illinoian drift had been passed through and Yarmouth interglacial had been entered.

The geologists J. A. Udden and E. W. Shaw (Belleville-Breese Folio, No. 195, U. S. Geol. Surv., p. 7) have noted in those quadrangles deposits which may consist of pre-Illinoian till; also old black soils which may belong to the Yarmouth. The quadrangles mentioned lie along the southern border of Madison County. The old soils were found at depths varying from 30 to 75 feet. In this region, too, the Illinoian drift is overlain by a blanket of loess. To arrive at any valuable conclusion, one ought to know just where specimens are found and at what depths and in what kind of deposits. On the other hand, the information is of the most meager kind. The specimens mentioned are not in a collection made by McAdams and now in the National Museum.