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

SOUTH CAROLINA.

(Map [28].)

1. Charleston, Charleston County.—In 1860, Dr. Joseph Leidy (Holmes’s Post-Pl. Foss. South Carolina, p. 114, plate XX, figs. 6–8) recorded the fact that fragments of the teeth of the giant beaver had been found in the Pleistocene deposit of Ashley River.

In the Pinckney collection is an upper cheek-tooth, the fourth premolar. The height of the tooth is 37 mm., the length is 16 mm., the width 11.5 mm. It was found in the vicinity of Charleston.

In the Scanlan collection, the property of Yale University, and made in the vicinity of Charleston, are five more or less injured teeth. One is a left upper molar, either the second or the third. The length of the grinding-surface is 12 mm., the width 13 mm. Two fragments of upper right incisors are interesting. One of these, 140 mm. long, bears the oblique excavated surface worn by the lower incisors. Each diameter of the tooth is 25 mm. The other fragment is 123 mm. long and comes from the middle of the tooth. The two diameters of this tooth are, as in the other one, 25 mm. Both of these teeth appear to be more strongly curved than the teeth of more northern specimens. Also, the striation on the outer face of the tooth is finer, finally becoming hair-like lines as the rear face is approached. More of the larger ridges in the front of the tooth are directed obliquely and terminate along a front groove than in specimens hitherto observed. It is possible that an undescribed species is indicated. The two teeth present some differences between themselves. Another fragment, 103 mm. long, has a diameter of 20 mm. At the base is seen a part of the pulp-cavity.