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History of Orange County
Mastodon
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Mr. Joseph Dudley was Governor.
Memoir on Extraneous Fossils, Am. P/ri. Soc. Trans.. VOL 4, p. 510.—— Read July 21, 1797. (Extract.)
But judge of my surprise where attentively examining them, I discovered that almost every bone of any length had received a fracture, occasioned most likely, by the teeth of the mammoth while in the act of feeding over his prey.
It is well known that the buffalo, deer, elk, and some other animals are in the constant habit of making such places their resort, in order to drink the salt water and lick the impregnated earth. Now may we not from these facts infer, that nature had alloted to the Mammoth the beasts of the forest for his food how can we otherwise account for the numerous fractures which every where mark these strata of bones! May it not be inferred, too, that as the largest and swiftest quadrupeds were appointed for his food, he necessarily was endowed with great strength and activity? That as the immense volume of the creature would unfit him for coursing after his prey through thickets and woods, nature had furnished him with the power of taking it by a mighty leap. That this power of springing to a great distance was requisite to the more effectual concealment of his bulky volume while lying in wait for prey. With the agility and ferocity of a tiger; with a body of unequalled magnitude and strengths, it is possible the Mammoth may have been at once the terror of the forest of man! And may not the human race have made the extirpation of this terrific disturber a common cause?
The nature and mode of life of the Mastodon were not well understood at the date of the above extract, and the writer supposed him to belong to the carniverous race, subsisting on flesh, in place of the gramniverous, as his teeth abundantly prove. If he had subsisted on flesh he would have been the most destructive butcher that ever drew blood.
Extract from an Address of Roderick Impey Marchison, F.R.S., before the Geo. Soc. of London, Feb. 17, 1843.
Speaking of the collection of bones obtained by Mr. Koch, he says:--
The arrival of such a collection could not fail to excite the most lively interest and curiosity among our naturalists and the bones having been attentively examined many members of this Society, produced a diversity of opinion respecting the generic character of the chief remains. North America had long been a fertile mine of such reliquiae, and the naturalists of the United States had not been backward in studying and dissecting them. It is not, therefore, a little remarkable that the same difference of opinion as to the generic and specific identity of the animals that prevailed across the Atlantic, is presented in the memoires which have recently been read before us: Dr. Hadon and Mr. Cooper having maintained opinions with which to a great extent Prof. Owen comes, while Dr. Grant and M. Koch have supported the views of the late Dr. Godman. Citing the American authorities on his side of the question, including Dr. Hoges, and enumerating no less than 13 species of Mastodon and 6 species of Tetracaulodon, Dr. Grant hits made a vigorous effort to vindicate the true generic characters of the Tetracaulodon, as founded on the presence of a tusk or tusks in the lower jaw, and certain variations in the form of the crowns of the molar teeth.
This view has been sustained by Mr. A. Nasmith in an elaborate paper on the minute structure of the tusks of extinct Mastodontoid animals.
Microscopical examinations of portions of the tusks, believed to belong to foe distinct species, viz:—M Gigantius, Tetracaulodon Godmani, T. Kochii, T. Taperoides, and the Missourium, has also led this author to the same inference as Dr. Grant and he concludes with the remark, that if it be established that specific differences positively do exist among all these animals, the value of such microscopic researches is great: but if the five animals are grouped as one, then such mode of observation is of no value in palaeontological science.
Prof. Owen had previously expressed opinions at variance with those of Dr. Hoges, Godman, Grant, and Mr. Nasmith, and his views have been supported within these walls by my predecessor, Dr. Bucklove. Pointing out certain mistakes in the setting up of the Missourium, as exhibited in Egyptian Hall, he compares the fossil with all forms with which he was acquainted; and, showing that it must have belonged to the Unjulata, he judges that the enormous tusks of the upper jaw constitute it a member of the Proboscidian group of Pachedumes, and that the molar teeth prove it to be identical with Tetracaulodon or Mastodon giganteus. He argues that the genus Tetracaulodon was erroneous, founded upon dental appearances in the lower jaw of a very young proboscidian, and that Mr. W. Cooper was correct in suggesting that the Tetracaulodon was nothing but the young of the gigantic Mastodon, the tusks of which were lost as the animal advanced in age. A comparison of the whole of Mr. Koch’s collection produced the result in Mr. Owen’s mind, that with the exception of a few bones of the Eliphas princigenius (Mamoth) all the other remains of the Proboscidian pochydieus in it belong to the Mastodon giganteus. And in respect to the Mastodon giganteus he expresses his conviction that it had two lower tusks originally in both sexes, and retained the right lower tusk only of the adult male.
Although unable to form a correct judgement on the probable structure of those extinct quadrupeds, I may call your attention to a recent work of Mr. Kaup, whose striking discovery of the Dunotherium is familiar to you, and who now seems to advocate, from perfectly independent sources of evidence, the same views as Prof. Owen, concerning the oxeology and generic characters of the Mastodon, founded upon the comparison of a series of bones and teeth belonging to the Mastodon longirostus, more numerous and complete than even those of the Mastodon giganteus.