2. Adrian, Lenawee County.—In the American Journal of Science (vol. XXXVIII, 1864, p. 223), Dr. Alexander Winchell reported the discovery of remains of a mastodon on section 7 of the township of Adrian, Lenawee County. The locality is said to have been about 7 miles northwest of the town of Adrian. The township must therefore be that designated as 6 south, 4 east. Winchell gave a list of the bones, and this comprises probably about half of the skeleton, including the skull. According to Winchell, these remains were found at a depth of only about 2 feet in a peat-bog; beneath this peat, which was 2.5 feet thick, was marly clay, passing at the depth of 4 feet into loose sand.
According to the glacial map of Leverett and Taylor, the locality would lie well outside the limits of Lake Maumee and would be on the Fort Wayne moraine. Probably a long while after the Wisconsin glacial sheet had retired from Michigan, this mastodon died there and became covered by the thin deposit of peat, as found. Here may be noted likewise some remains of a mastodon which Winchell, in the same paper, says had been found in Adrian.
In the U. S. National Museum (No. 188) there is a lower jaw of a mastodon, reported to have been found in a lacustrine marsh in this county, in the “same locality as the Decker mastodon in Adrian College.” A note states that with this were found bones of deer, elk, and castoroides. (See further, under the account of the skull of Castoroides found at Adrian.)
In the annual report of the Michigan Geological Survey for 1901, page 253, A. C. Lane mentioned that at Clinton, Lenawee County, Mr. P. B. Gragg had found several teeth and bones of mastodon. These seem to have been buried in the same glacial drain-way as those found in Adrian township.
27. Clayton, Lenawee County.—Mr. George Townsend, of Clayton, Michigan, has informed the writer that he has the lower jaw of a mastodon which he found while digging a posthole on his farm near that town. The locality is described as the middle of the line between the southeast and northeast quarters of southeast quarter of section 7, T. 7. S., R. 2 E., and near a creek. The township is Dover. According to Leverett and Taylor the immediate region is covered by glacial ground moraine.
3. Howell, Livingston County.—Dr. A. C. Lane (op. cit., p. 252) reported that a lower tooth and a part of a pelvis had been obtained in dredging the Shiawassee River, in 1900. Mr. C. W. Gilmore, of the U. S. National Museum, tells the writer that he saw a mastodon tooth which had been found in a swamp 2 miles southwest of Howell. Alexander Winchell, in 1864 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XXXVIII, p. 224), reported mastodon remains from Green Oak, in Livingston County. No details were furnished. Most of this county is occupied by the Charlotte moraine system, formed by the ice-lobe which extended out from Saginaw Bay.
4. Bellevue, Eaton County.—The writer has learned from Mr. N. A. Wood, of the University of Michigan, that mastodon remains had been described from near Bellevue by Mr. E. A. Foote, in the third volume of the Report of the Pioneer Society of Michigan, on pages [402]–[403]. The animal was found on the farm of Mr. Charles Cummings. It was a large one, the femur having a length of 3 feet 10 inches and one tusk was over 12 feet in length. Four teeth belonged to the upper jaw. The remains must have been found before 1879.
Bellevue is situated on the Kalamazoo River, which here traverses the Kalamazoo moraine. As in other cases in the central regions of the State, mastodons may have lived at a rather early stage after the Wisconsin ice began to withdraw; but they may have kept farther from the glacial front.
5. Olivet, Eaton County.—Dr. A. C. Lane (Ann. Rept. Board of Geol. Surv. Michigan for 1901, p. 253) reported the finding of mastodon bones near Olivet. A letter from Professor Samuel Rittenhouse, of Olivet College, gives the information that many of the bones of the skeleton had been secured. These were exhumed from a marsh on the northwest quarter of section 11, township 1 north, range 5 west. Following Leverett and Taylor’s map, the locality seems to be on an esker through which flows Battle Creek. The country in this region is covered by the Kalamazoo morainic system of the Saginaw lobe. The mastodon must have been buried after the ice receded from that moraine.
6. Stanton, Montcalm County.—Mr. N. A. Wood, preparator in the University of Michigan, informed the writer that Mr. L. C. Hodges, of Stanton, in 1911 found some mastodon teeth. Nothing more is known about these remains. Stanton is situated between the West Branch morainic system and the Charlotte system.