SOUTH CAROLINA.
(Map [22].)
1. Charleston, Charleston County.—Numerous fragmentary remains of Odocoileus have been found in the region about Charleston. F. S. Holmes, as early as 1859 (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1859, p. 177), announced the discovery of remains of deer in the vicinity of Charleston. Leidy (Holmes’s Post-Pliocene Foss. South Carolina, p. 109, plate XX, figs. 1–4) stated that the collections of Professor Holmes and Captain Bowman contained fragments of antlers, portions of jaws, and teeth which had been found in the Post-Pliocene beds of Ashley River. Leidy concluded these remains did not differ from the corresponding parts of the existing white-tailed deer (O. virginianus). Many fragments of antlers belong in the Scanlan collection at Yale University. They are thoroughly fossilized and are hard and heavy.
In the Charleston Museum (No. 1047) is an anterior cannon-bone of a deer, but no definite locality is recorded. It is black and apparently phosphatized, as are the numerous fragments of antlers found in the private collections at Charleston. The cannon-bone mentioned is 188 mm. long.
While the materials so far discovered do not enable us to distinguish the deer remains found about Charleston from Odocoileus virginianus, it is not improbable that they belonged in reality to another species, some perhaps to the Floridan Pleistocene species O. sellardsiæ.
Antlers of the white-tailed or Virginia deer are common in the collections about Charleston. In the Scanlan collection are bases of antlers of adult bucks and two simple spikes of young deer. One base is different from the others in being much flattened in one border, probably the one on which the first tine arose. It is possible that it represents a distinct species.
2. Darlington, Darlington County.—In 1848, Tuomey (Rep. Geol. South Carolina, pp. 177–180) stated that on the land of a Rev. Mr. Campbell, somewhere in the vicinity of Darlington, he had found fragments of the horns of a deer. He regarded the beds as belonging to the Pliocene. In the neighborhood, in a similar deposit, had been found molars of Mastodon maximus (=Mammut americanum). Both species may belong to the early Pleistocene.