In the collection of the Charleston Museum are some fragments of tusks of a species of walrus, probably O. rosmarus. One of these, No. 1028, furnishes 184 mm. of the distal end. The width at the fracture is 60 mm., the thickness 29 mm. The distal end is worn off somewhat obliquely, but not so much as in the tusk figured by Leidy; also, the tusk appears to have been less curved than the one which he described. The original length can not be determined.
Another fragment, No. 1029, was given to the Charleston Museum by Major E. Willis and was no doubt found in the region about Charleston. This gentleman has sent a fossil horse-tooth and a part of a sirenian to the U. S. National Museum from Wando River. The fragment is short, but belonged to a large tusk, its long diameter being 81 mm., the shorter one 51 mm. It was therefore a larger tusk and one whose thickness was relatively greater than that of the imperfect specimen found at Long Branch and figured by Leidy.
Mr. Earle Sloan’s collection at the Charleston Museum has two other fragments of tusks. One, No. 13497, is 113 mm. long, 60 mm. wide, and 25 mm. thick; the other, No. 13296, is 140 mm. long, 60 mm. wide, and 31 mm. thick.
Considering that all of the remains of the walrus found about Charleston have been picked out of great quantities of phosphate rock collected for commercial purposes, and that no records of the exact locality where obtained have been kept, it is impossible to determine their exact geological age. It is to be supposed that this animal inhabited the region about Charleston at the time it frequented the coasts of North Carolina and New Jersey. This appears to have been during the Wisconsin stage; but it is possible that the walrus extended its range far southward during more than one of the glacial stages. All of the specimens appear to be thoroughly fossilized.
FINDS OF XENARTHRA IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA.
NEW JERSEY.
(Map [3].)
1. Long Branch, Monmouth County.—In the American Museum of Natural History, New York, there is a large heel-bone which was found at the place named and identified as having belonged to a species of Megatherium, most probably to M. mirabile. It was presented by Dr. A. R. Ledoux, of New York, who wrote that he found it about 40 years ago while bathing at Long Branch. With this bone were found a skull of a walrus and a tooth of a mastodon. The heel-bone is somewhat more than 15 inches long. It was incrusted with barnacles and small oyster shells.
While one can not at present be certain that this animal did not live up to a late stage of the Pleistocene, it is improbable that it did so. It is also quite improbable that the megatherium and walrus lived at Long Branch at the same time. It is more likely that the megatherium had its existence there at the time when horses lived in the same region and when the Port Kennedy fauna existed; that is, at some time during the early Pleistocene about the Aftonian stage.