Message #121077

[dhill757]

Many believe that the fossils that are being washed up at Edisto are brought to the coast by streams, but to the writer it seems unlikely that such is the case. Nearby streams, such as South Edisto River, are sluggish and carry only fine sediment. It seems doubtful that they could bring down large heavy bones even if aided by tidal currents. Mr. Rutledge, who probably knows the area better than anyone, reported that the largest bone that he found weighed close to 40 pounds. The writer weighed the largest one now in the Edisto Museum --- a fragment of elephant bone --- and found that it weighed 20-1/4 pounds. Mr. Jaworski, who collected 967 specimens, reported that they were most abundant at high tide mark on the Edisto front beach and in the area immediately to the north east. Fossils were comparatively rare on Bay Point and on the beach fronting South Edisto River. Mr. Jaworski also pointed out that bone fragments less than 2/3 inches long were rare. In the writer's opinion, the waves at Edisto are eating into an unusually rich concentration of vertebrate remains buried just below sea level. In this connection it is interesting to note that the nearby Hunting Island beach, which, like Edisto, is receding rapidly landward, has not yielded a single fossil although it has been searched carefully.



(1) H. G. Richards, "Fauna of the Pleistocene Pamlico Formation of the Southern Atlantic Coastal Plain." Geological Society of America Bulletin, vol. 47, pp. 1638, 1640, 1936.

(2) My identification of these teeth has been verified by Dr. C. L. Gazin of the United States National Museum.

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/regional_review/vol3-3b.htm