NORTH CAROLINA.
1 Elizabethtown, Bladen County.—The geologist E. Emmons (North Carolina Geol. Surv., 1858, p. 197, fig. 18) described and figured an upper left second or third molar tooth of a horse which he called Equus caballus, the domestic animal. It, with a tooth from the lower jaw, had been found in a bed of Miocene age at Elizabethtown. Whatever may have been the age of the marl-bed, the horse lived during the Pleistocene. Conrad, however (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XLVII, 1869, p. 359), insisted on the Miocene age of the animal. The same tooth was, in 1860 (Holmes’s Post-Pl. Foss. South Carolina, plate XV, fig. 16), figured by Leidy and referred to E. fraternus. It is now known as E. leidyi. Miller (North Carolina Geol. and Econom. Surv., vol. III, p. 248) points out that patches of Miocene marl do occur in the vicinity of Elizabethtown.
2. Sixteen miles Southeast of Newbern, on the Neuse River, in Pamlico County.—In a locality on the left bank of Neuse River, about 16 miles below Newbern, bones of Equus and various other animals were first found long ago, apparently by Nuttall. T. A. Conrad, in 1838 (Fossils Medial Tert. U. S., p. X), spoke of great numbers of bones of horse, mastodon, etc. Harlan (Med. Phys. Res., p. 267) says that Conrad possessed specimens from the locality. Lydekker (Cat. Foss. Mamm. Brit. Mus. part 3, p. 89) states that there is in that museum an upper cheek-tooth from Newbern. So far as the writer knows, none of the teeth found here has been figured or accurately described.
On pages [358]–359 will be found a list of the vertebrate fossils collected at Newbern and a consideration of the geology.
3. Greenville, Pitt County.—In 1852, E. Emmons (Geol. Surv. North Carolina, p. 106) said he had procured a grinder of a horse at Greenville, in the sandy stratum just above the Miocene marl. In 1858 (Geol. Surv. North Carolina Agric., Eastern Counties, p. 197, fig. 21), the same writer figured an incisor tooth found in the Miocene of Pitt County. Conrad (Amer. Jour. Sci. 1871, vol. I, p. 468) spoke of the finding of black and mineralized teeth of a horse, which he regarded as E. fraternus, in Miocene marl. Leidy (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1871, p. 113) reported on the upper molar tooth which Conrad had found. He regarded it as occurring accidentally in the Miocene and as belonging to E. complicatus; but as the tooth was injured, Leidy thought it might belong to Hipparion. In the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia the writer has seen quite certainly the same tooth. It appears to be an upper premolar, the third or the fourth. It has a height of about 50 mm. and a length of 30 mm. The inner half has been split off. It is that of E. complicatus.
4. Plymouth, Washington County.—E. Emmons, in 1858 (North Carolina Geol. Surv. Agric., Eastern Counties, p. 197, figs. 19, 20), figured 2 teeth, an upper left molar or premolar and a hindermost left molar, which had been washed up on the beach at Plymouth. This place is on the south bank of Roanoke River. Judging from Emmons’s figures, one must conclude that these teeth belong to Equus leidyi.