KENTUCKY.
(Map [17].)
1. Bigbone Lick, Boone County.—In their report published in 1831 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XX, p. 371), Cooper, Smith, and Dekay reported they found in the collection from this place large teeth and bones of a horse. They regarded these as being of equal antiquity with the extinct animals associated with them. In 1847 (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., vol. III, p. 263, 264) Leidy stated that there were in the Academy 10 permanent molars of a horse from Bigbone Lick. These he referred to Equus curvidens. In 1853 (Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., vol. VII, p. 263) he wrote that several teeth supposed to have come from this locality had possibly been obtained elsewhere.
In 1851 (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., p. 140), he spoke of foot-bones of the horse, a calcaneum and first phalanx, from the same place. In 1860 (Holmes’s “Post-Pliocene Fossils of South Carolina,” p. 104), Leidy mentioned several horse-bones from Bigbone Lick presented to the American Philosophical Society by President Jefferson. In Rochester University are 2 hoof phalanges labeled from Bigbone Lick. Osborn (“Age of Mammals,” p. 478) puts down Equus from Bigbone Lick as being doubtful. There appears to be no good reason for this.
The remains of horses from this locality appear all to belong to Equus complicatus.
2. Monday’s Landing, Mercer County.—From Professor Arthur M. Miller, of the University of Kentucky, the writer has received for examination a much-worn upper left molar or premolar of a horse found at the place named. It was met with in a fissure filled with crystallized calcite, near the bank of Kentucky River. The vein of calcite was about 6 feet wide. Similar veins at this locality have been worked down to a depth of 200 or 300 feet. A part of a lower jaw of a deer-like animal was found in one of these veins. The horse-tooth is badly worn, but it appears to have belonged to a small species, the fore-and-aft length of the crown being only 19 mm. The enamel of the anterior lake is considerably complicated. It is impossible, from the lack of other fossil remains, to determine the geological age of this horse.