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

KENTUCKY.

(Map [11].)

1. Bigbone Lick, Boone County.—In the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia is a fine upper left hindermost molar, sent from the place named. There are present 23 or 24 plates. It is worn back to the apex of the eighteenth plate. The length along the base in a straight line is 253 mm.; there are therefore about 9 plates in a 100–mm. line. Some other teeth from the same place, now in the collection, were regarded as belonging to the same species.

In William Cooper’s account of collections made at Bigbone Lick (Monthly Amer. Jour. Geol., vol. I, pp. 168–171) he showed that great numbers of teeth as well as bones of elephants had been collected at various times at this locality. He refers all to Elephas primigenius, but certainly many of them must have belonged to the species now known as E. columbi. Cooper mentions the discovery of a fine and nearly entire skull of an elephant, 4 feet long, having all of the teeth and one tusk in it. In the nearly 100 years that have elapsed this specimen has probably suffered destruction.