The Pleistocene of North America

The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals is a book by Oliver P. Hay, covering the states east of the Mississippi River and the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°. The contents list names topics such as, among others, Sources of vertebrates, Richness of Pleistocene life, Evolution during the Pleistocene and Extinction of species. Under the heading ILLINOIS, an entry for Cairo, Alexander County, says the collection of the Buffalo Society of Natural History contains a tooth of an elephant, apparently belonging to Elephas primigenius.

The entry says the tooth is reported to have been found at Cairo, at a depth of 95 feet below the bed of Ohio River. The text says Pitt County is occupied by four Pleistocene formations, Pamlico, Chowan, Wicomico, and Sunderland. One entry says the skeletons lay at a depth of 4 or 5 feet, in a stratum of peat which overlay blue clay containing lacustrine shells, and that in the peat were found fragments of boughs and branches, some gnawed by beavers.