Word: swamps
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Mather was conducted to the excavation ditch where he spent half a day groping in the swamp ooze to determine whether the skull was complete and whether all the vertebrae of the skeleton were there. He was convinced at once that the find was a mastodon of huge proportions, unusually complete in all its parts. He assisted in naming and arranging the bones that had been found, and in giving directions for the excavation work which was done by workmen with their hands alone in order to avoid injuring the skeleton...
...first, it was believed that there were the remains of two prehistoric animals in the swamp, because one tusk of the mastodon was broken off and apparently buried in its own side, as if a struggle had taken place. Dr. Mather definitely destroyed this notion in the following letter to Mr. Hirschberg...
...Permit me to express to you my great appreciation for your courtesy in showing me the remains of the mastodon which you are recovering from the old swamp near Johnstown. The specimen is an unusually perfect and complete skeleton of this interesting, extinct form of life. The individual was an adult in the prime of life, full grown, but not aged and decrepit. Presumably it was bogged down in the swamp and died there...
...death struggle it twisted its head around and finally fell with the head partly under its own body. After the body tissues had decayed, the bones fell apart and settled irregularly in the swamp muck, so that the several parts of the skeleton are not now in their proper relation to each other. This explains the peculiar relation of tusks and vertebrae which led at first to the idea that there were two large animals in the same deposit...
...glacial epoch, an epoch of geological history which reached its climax between 25,000 and 50,000 years ago. This particular mastodon wandered around in Licking country after the ice had melted far to the northward from this place, as indicated by the fact that the remains are in swamp muck on top of glacial drift. It therefore lived between 5,000 and 30,000 years...