Professor Cope, probably in 1868, found the following 24 species. He did not state the localities exactly, except that they were along New River, in Wythe County. Two were on the land of Abraham Painter. The writer applied to the surveyor of the county named and has been informed that the farm which belonged to Abraham Painter is on New River, near the town of Ivanhoe. The nomenclature of the species has been revised. The species preceded by a dagger are extinct.
- †Megalonyx jeffersonii (p. [34]).
- Castor fiber.
- Neotoma floridana?
- Marmota monax.
- Peromyscus leucopus.
- †Tamias lævidens.
- †Sciurus panolius.
- Sylvilagus floridanus.
- Blarina sp. indet.
- Vespertilio sp. indet.
- †Tapirus haysii (p. [204]).
- †Equus complicatus? (p. [190]).
- †Mylohyus nasutus (p. [221]).
- Odocoileus virginianus (p. [231]).
- †Bison sp. indet. (p. [260]).
- †Ursus amplidens.
- Procyon lotor.
- Spilogale putorius.
- †Myxophagus spelæus.
- Crotalus sp. indet.
- Amyda sp. indet.
- Terrapene sp. indet.
- Cryptobranchus sp. indet.
At least 9 of the 24 species are extinct. None of the recorded species requires us to refer the deposit to early Pleistocene times. Ursus amplidens was described from the deposits at Natchez. This and Tapirus haysii, Equus complicatus, and Mylohyus nasutus point to middle Pleistocene, apparently about to Illinoian or Sangamon times.
Cope reported that the teeth and bones were found in a cave breccia. This consisted of a number of irregular masses which occupied “depressions and short galleries” in the southeast side of a line of hills. When those masses were excavated from their beds the floor and roof of a portion of a cave were exposed, with the stalactites, stalagmites, and usual incrustations. It would appear, therefore, that at some time in the early Pleistocene or in the late Pliocene the caves had been formed through the effect of streams of carbonated waters on the limestone; that in some way the bones and teeth of the animals listed above had got into the cave; that by a change in the amount or character of the water the caves had gradually filled up; and that afterwards the limestone which contained these caves had undergone great erosion.
Further north, in the valley of Jackson River at Covington, there is evidently a deposit of Pleistocene clay, for in it at a depth of 12 feet was found a tooth of a mastodon (p. [114]). Another mastodon tooth was found near Hot Springs, at the head of Wilson Creek, in Bath County, possibly in similar deposits (p. [114]). In Augusta County an unidentified species of horse (p. [190]) and the peccary Platygonus (p. [221]) have been discovered.
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.