United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By its frequency as a fossil species, this pachyderm represents the European Elephas primigenius, although the latter also occurs fossil in the United States and Canada, and abounds, as I learn from Sir John Richardson, in latitudes farther north than those to which the mastodon has been traced.
We know that the alluvium of the same district, having a similar relation to the present geographical outline of the valleys, is of Pleistocene date, for it contains around Le Puy the bones of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros tichorhinus; and this affords us a palaeontological test of the age of the human skeleton of Denise, if the latter be assumed to be coeval with the lava stream above referred to.
As to these flint implements, they are chiefly knives, hatchets, and instruments of that sort, and they have been found in such large numbers, and such diverse localities, and so uniformly in close proximity with the remains of the same species of extinct mammalia, that the evidence derived from them is, to say the least, of a very weighty character, and in the opinion of Sir Charles Lyell clearly establishes the fact that Elephas primigenius, Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, Ursus speloeus, and other extinct species of the post-pliocene alluvium, coexisted with man.
Among the extinct species formerly contemporary with man, no fossil quadruped has so often been alluded to in this work as the mammoth, Elephas primigenius. From a monograph on the proboscidians by Dr. Falconer, it appears that this species represents one extreme of a type of which the Pliocene Mastodon borsoni represents the other. Between these extremes there are already enumerated by Dr.
Some of the flint tools in the gravel of Abbeville have their angles very perfect, others have been much triturated, as if in the bed of the main river or some of its tributaries. The mammalia most frequently cited as having been found in the deposits Numbers 2 and 3 at Menchecourt, are the following: Elephas primigenius. Rhinoceros tichorhinus. Equus fossilis, Owen. Bos primigenius.
No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of Man at the period when the hippopotamus and Elephas antiquus flourished at San Ciro. But there is another cave called the Grotto di Maccagnone, which much resembles it in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the Bay of Palermo, near Carini.
More recently, M. Lartet has discovered at Clichy, in the environs of Paris, in the same lower gravel, a well-shaped flint implement of the Amiens type, together with remains both of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus.
"I know. Elephas! come along, Jimmie!" In spite of remonstrance, they rushed to the door and dragged in the "fossle." When Nicholas and his friends realised what was happening, they got up grunting and protesting. "Lend a hand, Andrew," the Boy called to the man nearest. "No no!" objected the true son of the Church, with uncommon fervour. "You, then, Nicholas." "Oo, ha, oo! No touch! No touch!"
However this may be, it is clear that at the dawn of civilization the species of the genus elephas had become limited to that part of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, and to the portion of Asia east of the Persian Gulf and south of China.
To complete the connection of these primitive people with the fossil ages, the French geologists, we are told, have now "found these axes in Picardy associated with remains of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus fossilis, and an extinct species of Bos."
Word Of The Day