Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.The American Mastodon.The ancestor of the modern elephants; note the extreme heaviness of body and the sloping head. The mastodon was heavier than the modern elephant, though not as tall.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.The American Mastodon.The ancestor of the modern elephants; note the extreme heaviness of body and the sloping head. The mastodon was heavier than the modern elephant, though not as tall.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
The American Mastodon.
The ancestor of the modern elephants; note the extreme heaviness of body and the sloping head. The mastodon was heavier than the modern elephant, though not as tall.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.The Siberian Mammoth.A near relative of the Indian elephant, and like the mastodon, a contemporary of Primitive Man. Note the greater height due to length of limb, the thicker and coarser hair, and the straighter shape of skull; the tusk formation, also, is characteristic, and longer than in modern elephants.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.The Siberian Mammoth.A near relative of the Indian elephant, and like the mastodon, a contemporary of Primitive Man. Note the greater height due to length of limb, the thicker and coarser hair, and the straighter shape of skull; the tusk formation, also, is characteristic, and longer than in modern elephants.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
The Siberian Mammoth.
A near relative of the Indian elephant, and like the mastodon, a contemporary of Primitive Man. Note the greater height due to length of limb, the thicker and coarser hair, and the straighter shape of skull; the tusk formation, also, is characteristic, and longer than in modern elephants.
The boy looked eagerly to the southward over the countryside.
“You’d like to go and start digging in Jackson’s Bog right now, wouldn’t you?” his uncle asked.
“Yes,” Perry answered with a laugh, “I would. I never thought that there might be a Mastodon so near home.”
“You don’t have to get far away from home to do fossil hunting,” his uncle reminded him. “I remember once I was talking to a group of young fellows in New York, bright working lads, and one of them said to me:
“‘Oh, Professor, if only those Wyoming-Texas places you talk about weren’t so far away! I’d mighty well like to do something like fossil-hunting on Sunday afternoons and holidays, but there isn’t any chance.’
“‘Nonsense,’ I said to him, ‘there are the Palisades, right across the river from your home. You can get there for a nickel and a half an hour’s ride. I miss my guess if that isn’t a good fossil-hunting ground.’
“Less than a month after that, Perry, the famous skeleton of a Phytosaurus was taken out of those very rocks.”
“By one of those chaps?”
“By a group of Columbia College boys,” was the reply. “They were interested in geology and had gone over there one Saturday to do a little field work ‘on their own.’ Getting hungry, they sat down on a flat rock to eat lunch, and while lunching, one of them noticed some brownish stain on the rock. Half idly, he said:
“‘This looks like a vertebra!’
“One of the others laughed, but the third, examining the stains, suggested:
“‘It might be bone, at that. Let’s take a bit home and find out!’
“But when they tried to chip it out they found the bone as hard as the rock. Still, they got a small piece and tested it in the laboratory for phosphate, because they knew that if the sample were rich in phosphate it must have come from some living thing. Sure enough, they found phosphate and decided it was bone. They telephoned to the Museum, and as soon as our men went to the find, we recognized at once that it was part of a skeleton. We chiseled away the rock andfound what became known as the ‘Fort Lee Reptile.’”
“And it was a Phytosaurus?” the boy asked. “What does a Phytosaur look like?”
“There were a lot of different Phytosaurus, Perry, but most of them resembled crocodiles, though more lizard-like than a modern crocodile. The Fort Lee specimen was christenedRutiodon Manhattanensis, and it’s the only one of that kind ever found.”
“Wasn’t that great for those college chaps!” exclaimed Perry.
“Any one, trained or untrained, can find fossils,” the scientist reminded him. “I tell you, Perry, there’s not a corner of the United States from which a fellow couldn’t drive to a fossil-bearing locality, and not many places where a fellow couldn’t reach fossils in a day’s walk.”
“You mean big beasts like the giant reptiles?”
“Not only those, of course. No. I’m speaking about fossils of all ages. For example, the Fort Lee Reptile was of the Triassic Period, Perry, so you see he belongs to a long time ago.
“In some places, the rock deposits are marine, and one might find fossil fishes. Some rocks were deposited near great forests and one might onlyfind fossil leaves and ferns, with, perhaps, primitive insects something like dragon-flies, calledMeganeura, a foot and a half long. In many places the rocks hold sea creatures from five to fifteen million years old. If every youngster in the United States would look around for fossils when he got the chance, we’d probably find more new species in a year than we find now in ten years.
“I wish I had the opportunity that school-teachers have in country schools! There isn’t a little red schoolhouse in all the country that couldn’t have a splendid local museum, if only the boys would get together.”
“I’ll get a gang together just as soon as I get back,” cried Perry.
“Do that,” said the professor, “tramp the banks of streams and railroad cuttings, everywhere that the soil has been cut away. First thing you know, you’ll drop on some rare prize that science might never have heard of otherwise.”
“All right, Uncle George,” said the lad, “I’ll remember that and I’ll see if I can’t get a Mastodon for our little museum out of Jackson’s Swamp. How about a Mammoth? Could I get one there, too?”
“Not so likely,” was the scientist’s answer. “The Mammoth only came south with the ice sheet. He was distinctly a winter-loving beast. That’s why we have better fossils of the Mammoth than of any creature. Explorers have found him mummied and almost whole, the entire carcass frozen stiff and preserved with the hide and flesh. Two complete specimens were found in Siberia and only a few years ago (1908) one of our museum men secured the larger part of a carcass, with hide and hair, from the edge of the frozen tundra in Alaska.”
“What’s the difference between Mammoths and Mastodons?”
“Teeth,” was the succinct reply. “The Mastodons had chopping teeth, the Mammoths had grinding teeth. You can tell them apart at once. The tusks of the Mastodon were more often straight, those of the Mammoth frequently curved inward.”
“Which was the bigger?”
“The biggest of the Mastodons was heavier than the biggest of the Mammoths, but more stockily built. The Mammoth was taller. The most imposing of them all was the Imperial Mammoth of North America, thirteen feet six inchesat the shoulder, with huge incurving tusks. But if it came to fighting, I would place my faith on the American Mastodon.”
“A scrap between those two would be worth watching,” cried Perry, his eyes sparkling.
“They wouldn’t be likely to meet,” said his uncle; “one lived in the north on the frozen plains, the other preferred warmer climates and forested lands.”
“Talking of fighting, I was in the Museum the other day,” said Perry, “when a terrific thunderstorm came up, and it got almost as dark in there as if it were night. A terrific flash of lightning came, and in the blaze, I had a sudden start, as though one of the skeletons had moved. The crash of thunder that followed seemed like a thousand beasts roaring all together. And I had a quick feeling of wonder as to what would happen if all those monsters should suddenly become alive and start ructions with each other.”
“It would be exciting, certainly,” said the professor.
“I’d want my camera,” rejoined Perry eagerly.
“Would you?” said the professor. “I’d run!”
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.The Mammoth Tusk He Found.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.The Mammoth Tusk He Found.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
The Mammoth Tusk He Found.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.Uncovering a Frozen Mammoth.Scene on Museum expedition to Alaska, where, near Eschscholtz Bay, a carcass was found, with some skin, masses of hair and wool, and of flesh and fat preserved. Note heavy mosquito veil worn by excavator.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.Uncovering a Frozen Mammoth.Scene on Museum expedition to Alaska, where, near Eschscholtz Bay, a carcass was found, with some skin, masses of hair and wool, and of flesh and fat preserved. Note heavy mosquito veil worn by excavator.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Uncovering a Frozen Mammoth.
Scene on Museum expedition to Alaska, where, near Eschscholtz Bay, a carcass was found, with some skin, masses of hair and wool, and of flesh and fat preserved. Note heavy mosquito veil worn by excavator.