The Pleistocene of North America / and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°

by Oliver Perry Hay

7. Buchanan, Berrien County.—Mr. William Hillis Smith, of Niles, Michigan, informed the writer that many remains of mastodons were found in a large ditch made to drain the Bakerstown marsh. This ditch began south and west of Buchanan and emptied into Lake Michigan. It was 16 feet wide and 8 to 10 feet deep. In the course of the work bones and teeth were frequently thrown out by the steam shovel, especially bones of mastodons. One skull was badly crushed, but was repaired by Mr. E. H. Crane, of Kalamazoo, and sold to the Ward Establishment, of Rochester, New York. Exact statements as to localities are wanting, but the ditch was evidently located on and within the Valparaiso moraine. It is this moraine which runs around the southern end of Lake Michigan and separates the St. Lawrence drainage from that of the Mississippi; east of the lake it extends far north into Michigan. Naturally, this moraine was formed before the withdrawal of the Lake Michigan lobe of the Wisconsin glacier into that lake, and the mastodons might have lived, died, and been buried there at any time after the exposure of the moraine and the development of climatal conditions that permitted their existence.

Mr. Hillis Smith stated that a tooth of an elephant had been thrown out in making the ditch above mentioned. This tooth was in the possession of Mr. E. H. Crane, of Kalamazoo. The species is not known.

The mastodons referred to above were mentioned by Lane in his report of 1901, page 253. He also called attention to a list of the mollusks found in the muck beneath one of the mastodons, prepared by Bryant Walker (Nautilus, vol. XI, 1898, p. 121), in which 36 species were named.

8. Eau Claire, Berrien County.—In the Joint Documents of the House of Representatives of Michigan, session 1841, page 559, Bela Hubbard stated that remains of a mastodon had been found on Paw Paw Creek, Berrien County. Lane (Rep. Geol. Surv. Michigan for 1901, p. 252) stated that there are in the Agricultural College at East Lansing, 6 teeth and half of a lower jaw, found near Eau Claire, and which may be the remains referred to by Hubbard. This appears, however, to be an error. On these teeth are the label: “Found at Eau Claire, Berrien Co., Mich. Found beneath several feet of muck while digging a ditch. B. L. Comstock, Aug. 17, 1896.” The teeth are extraordinarily large; M³ right is 222 mm. long.

The exact places where the remains mentioned were found have not been recorded. For an account of the small glacial lakes which occupied the depressions that existed between the Valparaiso moraine and the shore of Lake Michigan while the latter was yet filled with ice, see Leverett and Taylor’s Monograph No. LIII, pages 225–227. In the deposits of these lakes, but probably long after the glacial ice had retired, were buried the bones of the mastodon and other animals.

From Mr. N. A. Wood, of the University of Michigan, the information has been received that a part of a skull of a mastodon was found in making a public ditch about 2 or 3 miles south of Barada.

25. Galien, Berrien County.—In 1885 (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. V, p. 133), I. A. Lapham reported the discovery of the right ramus of the lower jaw of a mastodon at Terre Coupée. This place has disappeared from the maps; but it is said to have been situated on the railroad, 11 miles west of Niles, not far east of Galien. The jaw was found by Mr. A. H. Taylor, at a depth of 6 feet. It was peculiar in having a supernumerary molar, a seventh. The jaw was again described by Dr. J. C. Warren in 1855 (Amer. Jour. Sci. (2), vol. XIX, pp. 348–353).

9. Dorr, Allegan County.—A. C. Lane (Rep. Geol. Surv. Michigan for 1901, p. 253) stated that Frank Fleser and others had secured a jawbone of mastodon and several teeth. The place is stated to be 4 miles west of Dorr, probably in the valley of Rabbit River, where it cuts through the Valparaiso moraine.

10. Cannonsburg, Kent County.—In the Kent Scientific Museum at Grand Rapids is a lower left last molar, labeled as having been found at Cannonsburg, by Henry Detmer. The exact locality of the place where the tooth was found is unknown to the writer. The tooth is only slightly worn and is of a white color. Cannonsburg is on a great expansion of what Leverett and Taylor call the Charlotte morainic system, a system produced by the Saginaw lobe of the Wisconsin glacier. Being one of the more distant moraines of the Saginaw lobe, it was one of the earliest to be freed from ice and to offer itself to animal occupancy; but it may not have been invaded by mastodons until the glacial wall had moved much farther away.

11. Moorland, Muskegon County.—In the Kent Scientific Museum at Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a mounted mastodon, the bones of which, except the limbs, belong to a specimen found about 1905 in a swamp north of Moorland. The exact locality, as given by Mr. C. L. McKay, the finder, is the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter, section 16, township 10 north, range 14 west. The skull and the tusks are in good condition. Beneath the skeleton was found the skull which was made the type of Boötherium sargenti Gidley.