On another page (p. [127]) is presented the little that is known about the remains of two mastodons which have been reported from the region about Nashville. One tooth was found 11 miles west of the city (fig. 23, 12); a part of a skeleton at a point 11 miles southeast of it (fig. 23, 13). A tooth of an undetermined species of elephant was found long ago near Columbia, Maury County (p. 395, fig. 23, 15). According to Folio 95 of the U. S. Geological Survey, there are some narrow strips of alluvium along Duck River, at Columbia. The tooth may or may not have been found in this alluvium. Apparently in the neighborhood of Gallatin, Sumner County (fig. 23, 16), was found before 1835, at a depth of 40 feet, a tooth of an elephant (p. [181]). The information furnished by the tooth, as reported, is not worth much.
In June 1920, the writer received from Mr. William Edward Myer, of Nashville, a small box of fossils, collected near Nashville (fig. 23, 14). The exact locality is given as being about 300 yards upstream from Lock A, in Cumberland River. According to a sketch sent by Mr. Myer and here reproduced (fig. 25), there are loose deposits about 30 feet in thickness lying upon bed-rock. This bed-rock is found at about the level of low-water in the river. On this rock there is found first a bed of gravel, which, to judge from Myer’s sketch, is 2 or 3 feet in thickness. Above this comes a bed of sand of about the same thickness. The rest of the 30 feet is composed of gravel; and this rises to the level of the flood-plain. In the lowermost stratum, the bed of gravel, were found a tooth of Equus leidyi (p. [201]), a part of a femur of a horse of large size (p. [201]), and an antler of a small and probably unnamed deer (p. [234]). This antler resembles those of some of the Central American species of Odocoileus. In the next stratum above were found some indeterminable fragments of turtle bones, a tooth of a young mastodon (p. [127]), and a calcaneum of a large camel (p. [225]), belonging probably to the genus Camelops. In October 1920, Mr. Myer sent from the same locality a part of a molar of Mylodon harlani (p. [43]). These remains appear to the writer to indicate that the deposits are of early Pleistocene age, about that of the first interglacial.
Fig. 25.—Section on Bank of Tennessee River at Nashville.
Somewhere about Memphis (fig. 23, 17), were found, about the middle of the last century, some scanty remains of a young mastodon, a bone of Megalonyx (p. [43]), and a part of a lower jaw of Castoroides (p. [280]). Jeffries Wyman thought that these remains had been found in diluvium of the Mississippi River. It appears probable that they were found in the loess, which is well developed at that locality. Some exactness in reporting the locality would have led to the solution of this question.
KENTUCKY.
The State of Kentucky lies almost wholly south of the area of glaciation. Only along Ohio River, from about 50 miles above Cincinnati to about as many miles below, do any ice-laid drift materials appear, and these belong to the Illinoian glacial stage. For information on this drift the reader may consult Leverett’s account (Monogr. U. S. Geol. Surv., vol. XLI, pp. 256–258, plate II). Near Carrolton, between Ohio and Kentucky Rivers, is a ridge of Illinoian drift which rises as much as 200 feet above low water. Later-formed terraces of these rivers are found up to 90 feet. Not far away from this locality drift materials are found on the highlands to a height of 300 feet above the Ohio. Below Rising Sun, Indiana, on the Kentucky side, are knolls of drift deposits rising about 150 feet above the river. This Illinoian drift occupies nearly the whole of Boone County; elsewhere it forms a narrow strip along the Ohio.
Naturally there were laid down, at various times during the Pleistocene, deposits beyond the glacial front. Rivers coming down from the glaciers brought into the Ohio valley enormous quantities of gravel, sands, and clay, much of which must have been deposited along the banks or at the bottom. Such materials may have been laid down there during all or some of the earlier glacial stages, some perhaps during interglacial times. Probably at later times the most of these early deposits were swept away, but some may have persisted. The rock floor of the Ohio (Leverett, op. cit., p. 83) is below the level of the present stream, generally between 30 and 60 feet, and, at some points in its lower course, 75 feet. There might, therefore, now exist Illinoian drift materials anywhere above this rocky floor, as well as high up on the bluffs. It may be difficult, sometimes impossible, to determine the actual age of such deposits. During the whole Pleistocene, the rivers which enter the Ohio from the south were bearers of fine and coarse materials from the higher lands where they took origin. Sometimes, and in some parts of their courses, they may have occupied channels other than those now holding the waters. During times of depression of the country the sediments were dropped along the channels until the latter may have been nearly filled. Then the country may later have become elevated, so that the streams again cut down and left some of the old deposits as terraces. In some parts of the State, as in the region of Mammoth Cave, water circulating in the limestone rocks has dissolved these so as to produce caverns and fissures of various sizes. In such caves, when they became opened to the surface, animals would seek hiding-places and would perhaps bring in others as their prey. Dying there, their bones might be preserved. From such a cave has been secured a fine specimen of the skull of a peccary (p. [223]). Such caves should be examined with great care.
One of the most famous localities for fossil vertebrates in this country is that known as Bigbone Lick, in Boone County, about 22 miles in a straight line southwest of Cincinnati. Fossil bones were collected there as long ago as 1739. A condensed history of the explorations made there for fossils was given by William Cooper in 1831 (Monthly Amer. Jour. Geol., vol. I, pp. 158–174, 205–216). An account of the locality, its geology, and something about the fossil vertebrates and fresh-water mollusks found there was given by the geologist Charles Lyell in 1845 (“Travels in North America,” Murray ed., vol. II, pp. 62–66).
Enormous quantities of bones and teeth, especially those of Mammut americanum, have been collected at this place. When it was first discovered, bones of this animal, of the elephants, and some others, must have been lying exposed on the surface, the result probably of erosion by the creek passing there through what was then a marsh. General William Henry Harrison, in 1795, shipped from there 13 hogsheads of bones, but these were lost on their way to Pittsburgh. Dr. Goforth is reported to have got as many mastodon teeth as a wagon and four horses could draw. These teeth are said to have weighed from 12 to 20 pounds each. If this statement of weights is true, some or all of the teeth were those of elephants. In 1807, General William Clark made a collection at Bigbone Lick, at the instances of President Thomas Jefferson. Brief notices of these were published by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill and by Dr. Caspar Wistar. Some of these bones were sent to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia and were afterwards put into the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences. Another part was sent to Paris. Remains of various species, mostly the mastodon, have gone into many museums of this country and of Europe; but it is evident that the greater part of the things collected there, and especially of the finest things, has been lost to science.