Within the Area of the Illinoian Drift.
1. Equality, Gallatin County.—In 1875, E. T. Cox (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. VI, pp. 213–214), in his report on Gallatin County, Illinois, stated he had picked up numerous plates of elephant teeth at what was called “Half-moon,” located near Equality, in section 19, township 9, range 8 east. It is an excavation made many years ago to obtain salt-brine, near the Saline River, as the region thereabout furnishes salt springs. It is implied in Cox’s account that other remains of elephants had been found there, but usually in a bad condition. It is impossible to determine to which species of elephant the fragments belonged.
According to Leverett’s glacial map of the region (Monogr. XXXVIII, U. S. Geol. Surv., plate VI), the locality is occupied by alluvial terraces older than the Wisconsin drift. Not far away is the border of the Illinoian drift. Most probably the elephants there represented lived after the Illinoian stage, but they may have lived at any time thereafter up to the Late Wisconsin.
2. Chester, Randolph County.—Professor A. W. Worthen, former State geologist of Illinois, made (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. VIII, p. 8) the statement that Hon. William McAdams had found at Chester and Alton remains of mammoth, Megalonyx, Bos (=Bison), Castoroides ohioensis, and other extinct animals. He did not, however, say what species had been found at each place.
A newspaper statement was published in 1911 to the effect that William Rade, of Belleville, had a large tooth, found in the lowlands along Mississippi River south of Chester. It was described as a molar a foot in length, 6 inches in diameter (in height probably), weighing over 5 pounds, and having several parallel ridges across the face. It was doubtless the tooth of a species of elephant. A letter addressed to William Rade brought no response. It is probable that the tooth had been washed down from higher ground at some time. Its geological age is indeterminable.
3. Calhoun County.—William McAdams reported in 1883 (Trans. St. Louis Acad. Sci., vol. IV, p. LXXIX) that he had recovered from the clay in a ravine in Calhoun County, Illinois, “the jaw of an elephant beside which Jumbo would seem small.” One of the teeth from this fossil jaw, and which McAdams presented before the Academy for inspection, weighed nearly 18 pounds. It is not known what became of this jaw and the teeth; nor can we determine the geological age of the animal. Such discoveries lose most of their value through lack of exact statements regarding the origin of the objects.
15. Christian County.—In 1866 (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. I, p. 39), Worthen stated that a tooth of a mammoth had been found by David Miller in a sand drift near the South Fork of Sangamon River, in Christian County. It was presented to the State cabinet. The tooth is said to have been of a chalky whiteness. The drift which covers this county belongs to the Illinoian. It is not probable that the animal in question lived before the Illinoian stage.
4. Sangamon County.—In 1873, Worthen (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. V, p. 308) stated that the tooth of a mammoth had been found some years before in the bluffs of the Sangamon River and near the surface. He concluded that it had not come from beds older than the loess. While the probability is that the tooth was found in the Sangamon loess, there can be no certainty about it. The animal might have lived there while the Wisconsin ice was nearby.
5. Fulton County.—In Netta C. Anderson’s list of 1905 (Augustana Library Pubs. No. 5, p. 10), Professor Albert Hurd, of Knox College, reported that there was in the museum of that college a poorly preserved tooth of some species of elephant, found in Fulton County. All that can be said about the geological age of this find is that the county is covered by Illinoian drift and that the tooth is probably not older. Nevertheless, it might have been found in some excavation or along some ravine which had reached the Yarmouth.