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.

(Map [5].)

1. Stewartstown, Monongalia County.—Dr. G. F. Wright, in his “Ice Age in Northern America,” fifth edition, page 378, wrote that Dr. I. C. White had reported (Amer. Jour. Sci., ser. 3, vol. XXXIV, pp. 378–379) the finding of a tooth of a mastodon at this place; but in the article quoted nothing is said about a mastodon. Evidently White published this article elsewhere.

The tooth is said to have been dug up on the fifth and highest terrace along Monongahela River. In White’s article, page 378, it is stated that in the region of Morgantown the high-terrace deposits are about 275 feet above low-water in the Monongahela and 1,065 feet above tide. It is probable that the mastodon lived there during the early Pleistocene.

2. Parkersburg, Wood County.—In 1902 the present writer received from Mr. J. W. Miller, of the High School of Williamstown, West Virginia, a letter inclosing photographs of a mastodon tooth, found on Neal Island, 3 miles above Parkersburg. The tooth appears to be the upper left second molar and is furnished with all of its roots. The writer does not know under what conditions the tooth was found. Its perfect state of preservation shows that it could not have been carried far by the stream. For a discussion of the Pleistocene of some parts of West Virginia the reader may consult the paragraphs on pages [354]–[355].