Читать книгу The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals - Oliver Perry Hay - Страница 45

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(Map 3.)

1. Green Brier County.—In a cave situated somewhere in this county were found the bones described in 1799 by President Thomas Jefferson (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. IV, pp. 246–260) under the name Megalonyx. Colonel John Stewart became interested and saved some of the bones from being carried away by curious inhabitants of the region.

The bones, a distal end of a femur, a complete radius, a complete ulna, three claws, and some other foot-bones were secured and presented to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, from which they passed into the possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences, where they are still preserved. Some of these were described by Dr. Caspar Wistar (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. IV, 1899, p. 526, plates I, II).

Inasmuch as this species may have existed during a large part of the Pleistocene and certainly after the passing of the Wisconsin epoch, and inasmuch as no other species were found associated with the megalonyx bones, it is impossible to say to what part of the Pleistocene that particular animal is to be assigned.