History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 11

Author: Sutton, R., & Co., Wapakoneta, Ohio, pub
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Wapakoneta, Ohio : R. Sutton
Number of Pages: 878

USA > Ohio > Mercer County > History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 11
USA > Ohio > Van Wert County > History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 11

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PALEONTOLOGY. Mastodon giganteus.

The discovery of the remains of the mastodon dates back to the year 1G13, when in Dauphine, France, bones were found in a sand pit, and being secured by the surgeon Mazuya, he at once set up the claim that they were discovered in a brick tomb thirty feet in length, filleen in with, and bearing the inscription Tentobocchus Rex, who had been a chief in northern Germany and was defeated by the Romans under Cains Marius, B. C. 102. He further claimed to have found some fifty medals in the same tomb, bearing the effigy of this leader. The skeleton, after being exhibited as that of a giant in France and Germany, was finally examined by the anatomist Rivlan, who pronounced it the remains of an

HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.

elephant. A controversy then arose, lasting for some time, and it was not until 1832 that the remains were removed to the Paris Museum of Natural History and recognized as belonging to the mastodon by the naturalist, De Blainville.

Some gigantic bones being discovereed near Albany, New York, in 1705, were considered additional proofs of a former race of giants. Gov. Dudley, of Mass., after examining one of these teeth, wrote to Cotton Mather, he was " perfectly of opinion that the tooth will agree only to the human body for whom the flood only could prepare a funeral ; and without doubt he waded as long as he could keep his head above the clouds, but must at length be confounded with all other creatures." So the bones found near Santa Fe de Bogota, in the " Field of Giants," were believed to be human remains.

The attention of the scientific men of Europe was first attracted to the subject about the middle of the last century. M. de Longueil dis- covered some bones in Kentucky in 1739 and became so interested on account of their size that he presented them, on his return to France, to D'Aubenton and Buffon. The former ascribed the thigh bone and tusks to the elephant and the tooth to the hippopotamus; while Buffon attrib- uted the whole remains to a primitive elephant. From this time forward

of its tooth, Mastodon, being derived from the Greek words, mastos. nipple, and odons, tooth, or nipple-tooth. Dr. Win. Hanter, being misled by the tooth, believed it to belong to the carnivora, and so called it the "Carnivorous Elephant." The North American mastodon having re- ceived the first attention, Cuvier gave it the specific term " giganteus." or gigantie mastodon, which term has been generally adopted. Buffon called it " Mastodon Ohiotiens," or Ohio mastodon ; Pennant, the " Ele- phas Americanus," or American elephant; Blumenbach, " Mammut Ohioticum," or Ohio mammoth ; and Adrian Camper, " Elephas micro- cephalus," or long-headed elephant. It has also been designated the " Mastodon magnum," or great mastodon.

Within later years bones have been found scattered throughout New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ala- bama, Mississippi, Missouri, California, and Oregon. Herewith is inserted a cut of a skeleton discovered in 1850 near the village of St. Johns, Auglaize County, Ohio. The tusks and most of the vertebre, ribs, and pelvis, were so much decayed that they crumbled on exposure to the air. The following enumeration comprises the portion of the skeleton found :--

Lower Jaw (t) .- The anterior portion of the lower jaw preserved has

Fig 1

₹

Fig 3.

Fig 2.

great interest attached to the subject, and remains were eagerly sought by scientific men of all nations. Still the animal was believed to be car- nivorous. The first elaborate account is given by Cuvier, although he did not have the advantage of a complete skeleton. In 1801 Charles W. Peale secured an almost complete skeleton in Orange County, N. Y., and his son Rembrandt in 1803 published a pamphlet of ninety-one pages descriptive of the remains. This was entitled " An Historical Disqui- sition on the Mammoth or Great American Incognitum, an Extinct, Immense, Carnivorous Animal, whose Fossil Remains have been found in North America." In 1810 a skeleton was found in Benton County, Mo. It was imbedded in a sandy deposit full of vegetable matter, among which cypress, swamp moss, tropical cane, and stems of palmetto were recognized. This deposit was beneath fifteen feet of blue clay and gravel. In 1815 another was discovered near Newburgh, N. Y., which is minutely described by Dr. J. C. Warren in his work on the Mastodon gigantens. Through misapprehensions and other causes these remains have by dif- ferent authors been called by different names. Believed at first to belong to the fossil elephant of Sibema, it was called the "mammoth." We have already referred to it as the "Great American Incognita." Cuvier gave it its popularly accepted name, having designated it from the form

1 the form of a V, and is about eighteen inches long, terminating anteriorly in a horn five inches in length.

Tusks .- The circumference of one of the tusks at the point where it entered the cranium was twenty two inches-their length was not aseer- tained.

Teeth .- There were four of the lower jaw teeth found, all of them in an excellent state of preservation. The two anterior teeth ( Fig. 1) cae! weigh four and one-half pounds, and are seven and one-half inches long by three and one-half inches in width. They each have three transverse furrows dividing them into four nipples or eminences, each eminence being one and one-half inches in height. The two posterior teeth ( Fig. 2 are each four and one-half inches long by three and one-half inches in with. Each of these teeth has three transverse ridges, measuring one and one-fourth inches in height. The enamel is of a dark brown color. one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and not much worn. The roots are four and one-half inches long, and of a form that exhibits great strength.

Humerna (e)-This is the upper bone of the foreley. It- length it thirty-seven inches, it's greatest circumference thirty five inches, and its smallest seventeen inches.

Ulna (f). - This is the larger of the bones of the lower part of the

HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.

foreleg. Its length from the summit of the olecranon process to the lowest point of the inferior extremity is thirty four inches, circumference at lower extremity thirty-one inches.

Radius (g) .- The smallest bone of the foreleg. Its length is twenty- nine inches, the breadth of its carpal extremity six inches, and the entire circumference of the elbow-joint is forty-tive inches.

Femur, or Thigh-bone (a) .- This bone in its form resembles the femur of the human skeleton. It is thirty-nine inches long and seventeen and one-half inches in circumference at the middle of the shaft.

Tibia (b) .- The larger of the two lower bones of the hind-leg is twenty-eight inches long. The circumference of the upper extremity is thirty and one-half inches, the middle of the shaft fourteen inches

Fibula (c) .- This is a slender bone, twenty-seven inches long, passing three and one-half inches below the tibia to form part of the foot.

Bonex of the Feet .- All the bones of the right forefoot and right hind- foot were found, also portions of the other two feet.

Part of the bones of another mastodon was found in Clay Township, in December, 1874, by some men engaged in digging a ditch to drain Muchinippi Swamp. The ravine in which the animal was found, and through which the ditch was dag, partakes somewhat of the character of the swamp. The depth of the superficial deposit at the point at which the remains were found is about six feet. The upper third is black muck, and the remainder shell marl.

The marl thrown out of this ditch, after a few months' exposure to the air, becomes so white as to form a strong contrast with the inky sur- face soil. The following are the portions of the skeleton found :-

Tusks .- Two tusks twenty-eight inches in circumference at the base, and twelve feet long.

Teeth .- Three terth, two of them in a good state of preservation. Vertebræ .- Six Cervical (k),

Two Dorsal. Extremities .- One Humerus, One Femur, One Tibia, One Uina, One Radius, Two Patella, Three Bones of the feet.

The bones of this specimen are much larger than the corresponding ones of the specimen found in 1870, and are probably those of an old animal, as the teeth are very much worn. The remains were purchased by the writer, and deposited in the museum of the Heidelberg College of this State.

A third mastodon was discovered by Mr. Samuel Craig, in January, 1878, whilst engaged in surveying in Washington Township. No careful search for the skeleton has yet been made. The boggy character of the ground in which the animal is located leads us to believe that the remains will be found in a good state of preservation.

The first and second mastodons were found so near the surface that we are almost led to the belief that they have been buried within 500 or 1000 years. " There can be no question that they lived and died long after the deposition of the drift on which the marsh deposits rest."

~Such discoveries exhibit different conditions, some being perfect, while others are in a crumbling state. In Europe, greater antiquity renders the remains fewer and more fragmentary than in America. Teeth are found in large quantities on both continents. These are composed of dentine, and enamel which is spread over the crown, while the trans- verse ridges are not filled with cement, as is the case with those of the elephant. They bear no relation to the carnivora, for although having an external covering of enanul, they are destitute of the longitudinal serrated cutting edge exhibited by the flesh-eating. By use the protube- rances became truncated to a lozenge form, and the whole structure shows adaptation to the mastication of vegetable substances. The teeth in different species varied in number, and instead of all appearing at onee, were developed in succession as the wasto by wear demanded. The upper teeth are a little wider than the lower, the first three wider at the back than the front, the next square, while the last terminates in blunt points. Eight deciduous teeth, two on each side, are developed Foun after birth, but these are soon shed and followed by a third decid-

uong tooth, somewhat larger and more complicated, constituting the first three-ridged, six-pointed molar. This in turn is followed by s fourth of the same form, but of greater size. Sometimes these four on each side of each jaw are found to have coexisted. The fifth is still larger, but before its development, and generally before that of the fourth, one or more of the carlier teeth have disappeared. The sixth and last, occupying the whole side of the jaw, is much larger and differs otherwise from all others. It is about ten inches long, four wide, twenty around the neck, and weighs from ten to twelve pounds. The crown is divided into four or five ridges with eight or ten points or furrow. Such a succession of teeth was rendered necessary by the prodigious labor imposed in masticating the large quantities of food necessary to the maintenance of life. During the wear thus evolved by the molars in crushing branches and twigs, another tooth developed to take the place of the old decayed and displaced one. In addition to the testimony of the teeth, the contents of the stomach have been found, showing con- clusively that the animal was of the herbivori. This was found with the Newburgh remains, in a description of which Dr. Prime observes: " In the midst of the ribs, imbedded in the mart and unmixed with shells or carbonate of lime, was a mass of matter composed principally of the twigs of trees, broken into pieces of about two inches in length, and varying in size from very small twigs to those of a half inch in diameter. There was mixed with these a large quantity of finer vegetable sub- stantes, like finely divided leaves, the whole amounting to from four to six bushels." All evidence is corroborative, and goes to show the mas- todon was a vegetable feeder, and subsisted on the coarse as well as ten- der branches of trees, leaves, rushes, and other aquatic plants. That it was covered with hair is attested by the locks and tufts of a dun brown color found in the vicinity of the skeleton at Scotchtown, New York. These locks varied in length from two to seven inches. Again, both the skin and hair were found with the bones sixty fect below the ground surface near the mouth of the Wabash River. It is evident several dif- ferent species existed, being ranged by different authors into from four to thirty different classes, although the latter number is probably unwar- ranted. Many of these classifications are based on a slight variation of a tooth, and not on a'comparison of skeletons. That the mastodon appeared during the tertiary period-the age of mammals-is attested by geology, for its traces are found running across the miocene, plia- cene, and glacial periods. Great changes of climate were thus withstood, and this monster stood a witness to the development and extinction ot many other forms until, after untold ages, it succumbed to the fate ot other monsters of the old world, while its bones are made a text-book by the student of the new world as he seeks the history of organized life. development, and extinction. In their case the cause of extinction is unrevealed, for it could not have been on account of rigorous climatice changes, because the tropics still furnish a pliocene climate; neither could it have been produced by a calamity, as the different species were dispersed too widely to be overwhelmed by any catastrophe of nature. It yielded at last, perhaps, a prey to some lingering hostile ageney which. operating for untold ages, first weakened, then reduced, and finally destroyed.

The Mammoth.

This mammal, sometimes called the "hairy mammoth," and again the "Siberian elephant," was named from the Tartar term " mamma, " signi. fying the earth, because the Tungooses and Yakonts believed it worked its way through the earth like a mole. They still believe the mammoth has taken refuge in subterranean caverns, and the moment it approaches the light it dies. So it is that remains are found, because the animal subjected itself to the fatality of the light, through mistake orrasjoned by the irregular conformations of the land. Its scientifie name is Eali- phas primigenius or primitive elephant, which was applied by Blumen. bach. The name, however, is a misnomer, as several elephantine grotips had lived and died before the appearance of this species. With ('re . mastodon, the elephant lived through two periods before the existener of the mammoth. Three distinct species have been recognized and designated as the " E. primigenius" of Europe and Silveris ; the " E. Americanos" and " E. imperator." The latter of Dr. Leidy is probably the same as the " E. Columnly" of Dr. Falconer.

HISTORY OF VAN ,WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.

The mammoth was from fifteen to eighteen feet high, thus surpassing in size the largest existing elephant. It was covered with long shaggy hair, with a copious mane extending along the back. The body was heavier and the legs shorter than those of the elephant. The tusks were from eleven to fifteen feet in length and curved abruptly outward and backward. The skull was elongated, with a concave forehead and an obtuse lower jaw. The grinding tooth forms a prominent characteristic, as it forms only as required for use, instead of appearing at once, as is usual with most animals. Adults have only four teeth, one on each side of each jaw. A single tooth weighs as much as seventeen pounds, is broad, with a crown of successive plates, and these subdivided so as to render successive formation not only possilde, but favorable. The fore- part of the tooth gives way first, but is not entirely unfitted for service, as it would still serve to crush coarse branches, while the more perfect part of the tooth would reduce this crushed mass to a pulp.

A tooth found near Zanesville, Ohio, weighed over seventeen pounds, and had a length of eighteen inches. It was a permanent molar, of a light, color and quadrangular in form. Of the four faces the inferior is oval, being widest at the middle. There are sixteen surface plates of two layers of enamel, which reveal the remains of former plates. Both posterior and inferior faces show the termination of undeveloped plates. The superior border contains the fangs, and the fourth face, or anterior, is very short and irregular. The teeth resemble those of the Asiatic elephant, but are larger and heavier. In number and anatomical plan they are the same, but differ in plates, as those of the elephant tooth number twenty, while those of the mammoth number thirty. Like the mastodon, this animal was widely dispersed, having ranged over the greater part of the earth's surface. The remains are found in great numbers along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska. Ivory in remarkable state of preservation is found washed out by the rivers of the north. It is collected by fishermen and sent to China and Europe, where it answers the purposes of the ivory of the living elephant. As high as 16,000 pounds have been sold in St. Petersburg in a single year. Tile- sius estimated the bones in Russia to exceed those of all the elephants now in existence upon the globe. True, all the fossiliferous remains cannot be attributed to the mammoth, as many different species of the elephant have existed through the countless ages of the past. Ivory of the same class was discovered in Greece 320 B. C. All those early bones belonging to the elephantine family were ascribed to human beings or demi-gods. Thus the patella of one found in Greece was called the knee-bone of Ajax: some remains thirteen feet long were by the. Spar- tans ascribed to Orestes : some others eighteen feet in length, found in the Isle of Ladea were attributed to Asterius, son of Ajax, while others found in Sicily in the fourth century were believed to belong to Poly- phemus. The literature of the middle ages was so voluminous upon this subject that it has very properly been called "Gigantology." From 1456 to 1564 bones were discovered throughout France, all of which were attributed to a a race of giants.

An uprooted tree near the cloister of Reyden, in Lucerne, Switzer- land, exposed some bones which, upon examination by Felix Platen, a celebrated physician and professor at Basle, were pronounced the remains of a giant nineteen feet in height. The inhabitants of the province then adopted the image of this imaginary giant as the supporter of the city arms. In 1706 only two fragments of the skeleton remained, and were recognized by Blumenbach as belonging to the elephant. With some remains found in Germany in 1663 Leibnitz constructed a strange mon- ster with a horn in its forehead, and a dozen molar teeth in each jaw, which he then named the Fossil Unicorn. For more than thirty years this was accepted, until the discovery of an entire skeleton in the valley of the Unstrut. Numerous remains were found during the seventeenth century all over the face of Europe, but were little understood, as evi- denced by the disposition often made of them. Let us instance that of the church at Valence, Spain, which attributed a molar tooth to St. Christopher, whose existence at any period was about as questionable as that of the unicorn of Leibnitz. Again, away down the descent of years, In 1789, an elephant femur was carried about the streets at the head of processions by the canons of St. Vincent, by whom it was de- clared the arm of a saint, for the purpose of producing rain. It was probably about as effective as the hurling of the Pope's bull at the comet

to stay it in its wayward flight. The eighteenth century did, however, sweep aside many of the curtains and unravel many of the mysteries which hung like a pall over the long line of ages, weak through igno- rance, and apprehensive through superstition. Here, too, science was fought back and retarded in her onward march by a blind and jealous opposition which had fears to feed and beliefs to support. That oppo- sition easily accounted for these remains after yielding their human or divine origin and character by ascribing them to elephants brought from Carthage by Hannibal in his expedition against Rome. If they were not the remains of giants, as claimed for years, they must at least be accounted for on some equally absurd hypothesis, and as they were found along the route of the Carthagenian army, they must be correct in ascribing them to the animals of that army.

One weakness of this conclusion was its failure to conclude, for it did not embrace those numerous remains found where no Carthagenian army ever marched with African elephants in its train. In 1799 Ossip Schu- machoff found a frozen mass at the mouth of the Lena River. A year later he was still unable to determine what it was, but in 1801 he found it sufficiently exposed by the action of the water and ice to disclose its nature. Returning to his family he related his experiences, when the narration of the discovery produced such dread and consternation that sickness ensued, for it was believed the discovery of an entire mammoth foreboded death to the whole household. Superstition proved almost fatal, but the chief recovered and revisited the spot in 1804, when he cut the tusks away, while the inhabitants of the vicinity cut away the flesh for their dogs until the skeleton was almost cleared. According to the description of the Tungusion, " the mammoth was a male, with a long mane on the neck; the tail was much mutilated, only eight out of the twenty-eight caudal vertebræ remaining; the proboscis was gone, but the places of the insertion of the muscles were visible in the skull. The skin, of which about three-fourths was saved, was of a dark gray color, covered with reddish wool and coarse long black hair. The entire skeleton, from the forepart of the skull to the end of the mutilated tail. measured sixteen feet four inches. The tusks measured along the curve nine feet six inches, and in a straight line from the base to the point three feet seven inches." Another entire body was found on the bank of the Alascia, near the frozen ocean, in 1800, by Gabriel Sarytchew, 3 Russian naturalist. In 1843 Middendorf, a distinguished naturalist, discovered a mammoth on the Fas between the Obi and Yenisei, in lati- tude 66° 30' north, which was in such a perfect state of preservation that the ball of the eye was preserved and is now in the museum at Moscow. The present habitat of the elephant being the tropics, it is classed as a tropical animal, and if we judged solely from a knowledge of living species, we would be compelled to believe that at the period of the mammoth, the climate of Siberia must have been tropical. Still. it is fallacious to conclude that because an animal flourished under a high temperature, all remains of a whole family must be assigned to the same climate. The tiger is tropical, but it has been seen on the borders of the perpetual snows of the Himalayas, among the snows of Mt. Ararat, and is common near Lake Aral, in latitude 45º north. In the summer of 1828 one was killed on the Lena in latitude 52}2 north. So the zebra is tropical, while the horse withstands a rigorous climate. It does not follow, then, that Siberia must be provided with a tropical climate for the maintenance of one group, although other species of the same genus do require such a climate. The food of this group must have been largely of a coarse nature, such as the branches of fir, birch, poplar, willow, and alder. Forests of these types are found, according to travel- lers, as far north as latitude 699 5'. Again, it may be supposed that whatever vegetation did flourish in this region, was of a very nutritious quality, and so did not require such prodigious quantities as would at first appear necessary to sustain large numbers of these animals. Such, at least, is the case in South Africa, where, with a limited vegetation suitable for food, large numbers of the greatest living animals find sub- sistence. Still it might not be extravagance to suppose that at the period of the mammoth a vegetation flourished between latitude 40? and 65° north, which was capable of feeding this great mammal and its con- temporaries. Evidence exists pointing to the latter part of the pliocene period as the birthday of the mammoth. In Europe it lived through the long glacial period, which it survived for many ages, In America

HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OIIIO.

it was contemporaneons with the M. giganteus. In Europe it became rytinet about the dawn of the Reindeer cpoch, and probably ceased to exist in the United States about the same period. Touching the causes feeling to that extinction, the observations on the destruction of the mastodon are equally pertinent. Sir Charles Lyell remarks : "Between the period when the mammoth was most abundant and that when it died out, there must have elapsed a long interval of ages when it was growing more and more searce, and we may expect to find occasional stragglers buried in deposits long subsequent in date to others, until at last we may succeed in tracing a passage from the post-Pliocene to the recent fauna, by geological monuments which fill up the gap." Man, the mastodon, and the mammoth fill the gap, and it remains to be seen how far anterior to its ingress those monuments may be discovered. Age, in numbered years and countless epochs, stamps its way upon the records of geology until its chronology is lost for a moment in the dim twilight of periods upon which the sunbeams of investigation have not yet fallen with suf- ficient power to reveal the antecedent history of the earth and its inhab- itants. That many monuments have crumbled and perished and so are no longer discoverable cannot be doubted for a moment, when the long descent is traced by these until they become so aged and feeble that they crumble beneath the touch and fade away before the light.

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History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 11

Author: Sutton, R., & Co., Wapakoneta, Ohio, pub Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Wapakoneta, Ohio : R. Sutton Number of Pages: 878

Author: Sutton, R., & Co., Wapakoneta, Ohio, pub
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Wapakoneta, Ohio : R. Sutton
Number of Pages: 878