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

WEST VIRGINIA.

So far as the writer has learned, vertebrate remains belonging to the Pleistocene have been found in West Virginia in only eight places and only seven species are represented: Mammut americanum (p. [115]), Elephas sp. indet. (p. [179]), Equus niobrarensis? (p. [190]), Symbos cavifrons (p. [254]), Megalonyx jeffersonii (p. [34]), Odocoileus virginianus? (p. [231]), and a peccary (p. [221]). The horse appears to indicate an early Pleistocene time, possibly pre-Kansan, but all the other species continued from at least the Aftonian stage through to the Late Wisconsin. The specimens, therefore, do not help us to determine the age of the deposits in which they are found.

No part of the State lies within the glaciated area; hence, during the whole of the Pleistocene epoch its surface was subjected to weathering and to the erosion of running water. At times the streams built up deposits on their beds. Later they deepened their channels and left a part of their former deposits as terraces. At a still later time the deposition and deepening may have been repeated, and as a result there is sometimes a series of terraces one above another. The age of these terraces and their origin have been the subjects of a good deal of controversy.

In the Masontown-Uniontown Folio (U. S. Geol. Surv. No. 82), M. R. Campbell has discussed the terraces along the Monongahela River, which occur at an altitude of about 1,000 feet above sea-level and perhaps 150 feet above the present river. Also more than 100 feet above the present river are old abandoned river channels which are now partially filled up.

In 1911 (U. S. Geol. Surv. Folio 178, pp. 11–13), E. W. Shaw and M. J. Munn described the Quaternary of the Foxburg and Clarion quadrangles in Pennsylvania, where the same Pleistocene problems are involved. They present an account of the different views regarding the high-level terraces and the abandoned channels. They concluded, as did Campbell, that these terraces and channels dated back to the early Pleistocene and probably to the Kansan stage. Figure [17] is a reproduction of Shaw and Munn’s figure 10, on their page 12. It represents a section across Allegheny River at Parker’s Landing, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. The uppermost gravels in the figure would be those of supposed Kansan age; while the lowermost are those laid down during the last glacial stage, the Wisconsin. In the materials of the high terraces one may expect to find fossil vertebrates of the early Pleistocene, as in the case of the mastodon reported from Stewartstown, West Virginia (p. [116]). The conditions of burial should, however, be carefully studied and recorded; for it would be possible for remains to be left at a later time on such a terrace and to be covered up by earth washed down from above.

On page [254] an account is given of finding a musk-ox skull near Steubenville, Ohio, on a terrace about 75 feet above the low-water mark. The region of the western part of West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and northeastern Ohio is interesting because of its history during the late Pleistocene. The reader is referred to Leverett’s monograph, “The Glacial Formations and Drainage Features of the Erie and Ohio Basins” (Monogr. U. S. Geol. Surv., vol. XLI, 1902, pp. 88–158, with figs.). Leverett essays to show that the upper part of the Ohio River, the Allegheny, and the Monongahela with its branches at one time emptied into Lake Erie. The connection was made through Beaver River, which now flows into the Ohio, and Grand River, in eastern Ohio, now emptying into Lake Erie. When the Wisconsin ice filled Lake Erie and occupied its southern shore the mouth of Grand River was dammed and the water could escape only to the south. The flow was reversed, and after it had reached the top of the divide it entered the stream that then represented the head of the Ohio. When at length the mouth of Grand River was reopened, the new channel had been cut so deep that most of the streams of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia continued to flow down the Ohio. Leverett’s figure representing the preglacial drainage of the upper Ohio region is here reproduced (fig. 10).