Mammal Bones And Teeth From Gray's Reef & Other Places

The fact that the Edisto deposits that now are being excavated contain the remains of bison and bears --- animals that apparently did not migrate into America until the closing stages of the Ice Age --- suggests that our deposit is fairly young. It is difficult to determine the exact age because the fauna that is being washed up is considerably mixed. The waves may have access to two or more thin deposits of different ages. Some of the sharks' teeth belong to species that antedate the Ice Age but these teeth are resistant objects that may have been reworked --- mixed up with Ice Age deposits during the Ice Age. Likewise, it is known that some of the typical Ice Age mammals that are now extinct -- American horses, the Giant Sloth, Mastodon, and Woolly Mammoth --- persisted in North America until a few thousand years ago. These particular animals were still in existence following the retreat of the last glacier and some, at least, after the arrival of the earliest human beings on this continent. You may ask, is it, then, not possible that the Edisto waves may uncover human artifacts or actual skeletal remains? It is possible but very unlikely.

We shall not attempt in this brief account to describe the appearance or the habits of all of South Carolina's numerous extinct animals but Mr. Kiener has sketched some of the commoner ones, basing his sketches on well known restorations. Only bones and teeth and plates are found at Edisto and Irving Gladstein has kindly photographed a number of these. Of particular interest are the tiny milk teeth of the elephants2 --- one from the browzing mastodon, the other from the mammoth, a grazing animal. Bones of the former have been found associated with human artifacts in Florida; frozen bodies of the latter have been recovered in arctic regions. The Giant Sloth that lived in the Edisto region bore little resemblance to his modern tree-dwelling relative. The Ice Age sloth was a ground-dweller that stood erect to pull down branches with its claws. It probably lumbered awkwardly on all-fours, walking on the outer edges of its feet. Some of the horses were as large as those living today.