Discovering the Mastodon:
Part 2: Enter the French
North American regions claimed by
European superpowers in 1740.
During the first half of the 1700s, most of North America was claimed by three European superpowers. Spain occupied Mexico and Florida while the Britain domains included the thirteen Atlantic colonies and the Hudson Bay Region. The French controlled Quebec and the Great Lakes and claimed the vast interior drainages of the Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
In 1739, Baron Charles de Lougueuil commanded French troops and their Native American allies in a campaign against the Chickasaw in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Early in the campaign Lougueuil's party stopped by a marsh near the Ohio River that was probably the site later known as Big Bone Lick (1). Several fossils were collected at the site, including a tusk, a femur (upper leg bone) and at least three molar teeth. Following the completion of the campaign in 1740, Lougueuil sent these fossils to the Cabinet du Roi (Royal Cabinet of Curiosities) in Paris.
The Ohio specimens at the Cabinet du Roi laid in relative obscurity until Jean-Etienne Geuttard published an article in 1756 on North American geology. In it he presented an illustration of one of the molars and puzzled over its identity: "From what animal is this?"
Femurs from Indian Elephant (top),
Siberian Mammoth (bottom) and
"animal de l'Ohio" (middle).
(after Daubenton, 1765)
The first systematic examination of Lougueuil's fossils was published in 1762 by Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton (2). Anatomical comparisons of the femur (upper rear leg bone) with that of an elephant and that of the Siberian mammoth (3) led Daubenton to conclude that, although they differed in size, the three femurs were nearly identical in form. The reasonable conclusion, therefore, was that these three animals were all elephants. (At the time, Daubenton and most other naturalists belived that all living elephants belonged to just one species. Many also suspected that the Siberian Mammoth was an elephant.)
Examination of the tusk confirmed Daubenton's identification of the "animal de l'Ohio" (Ohio animal) as an elephant. The teeth, however, were another matter.
The massive molars of elephants (and mammoths) have flat grinding surfaces with numerous low ridges and relatively little enamel. In contrast, the molars of the "animal de l'Ohio" had multiple pairs of pronounced conical knobs covered with dense enamel. It was clear that the Ohio molars could not belong to an elephant. Instead, Daubenton attributed the molars to a giant form of hippopotamus, an animal with somewhat similar teeth. The teeth and bones were reportedly collected together by Native Americans in Lougueuil's party, but Daubenton dismissed these accounts by "ignorant savages". To him, these fossils clearly belonged to two different species (5).
Molars from the "animal de l'Ohio" (left) and the Indian elephant (right)
(after Cuvier, 1825)
The identification of these Ohio fossils satisfied Daubenton and his superior, George Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (7). However, the presence of presumably tropical elephants and hippopotami so far north was puzzling. Similarly, the remains of the Siberian mammoth, which was also considered an elephant, were found even further north.
The typical explanation for this anomalous distribution was that their remains were transported north during the massive biblical flood. For Buffon, this explanation was insufficient. Instead, he concluded that if elephants were once found so far north, then these northern lands must have once been tropical. The existence of northern elephants ultimately led Buffon to develop a remarkable "Theory of the Earth", the details of which were published in his Epoques de la Nature in 1778. (See Epochs of Nature.)
Next: Part 3 - Enter the British
Print Resources:
- Blumenbach, Johan Friedrich. 1799. Handbuch fur Naturgeschichte. Gottingen. Translated by R.T. Gore as: A Manual on the Elements of Natural History. London: 1825.
- Cohen, C. 2002. The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myths and History. Translated by William Rodarmor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Originally published as Le Destin du Mammouth. 1994. Editions du Seuil.
- Cuvier, Georges. 1825. Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles : où l'on rétablit les charactères de plusieurs animaux dont les révolutions du globe ont détruit les espèces. Paris: G. Dufour et E. d'Ocagne.
- Daubenton, Louis Jean Marie. 1765. Mémoire sur des os et des dents remarquables par leur granduer. Mémoiries de l'Académie royale des science. Paris (1764): 206-209.
- Semonin, P. 2002. American Monster: How the nation's first prehistoric creature became a symbol of national identity. New York & London: New York University Press.
- Simpson, G.G. 1943. "The Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates in North America." Journal of Paleontology. Vol 17(1): 26-38.
Notes:
- Most autorities believe that Longueuil fossil site was Big Bone Lick, but this has been contested in a 1943 paper by the famous American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson. Instead, Simpson believed that Longueuil probably recovered the fossils from further downstream the Ohio River. [go back]
- Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton (1716-1800) was the lead anatomist of the Cabinet du Roi and one of the world's leading authorities on vertebrates during much of the 18th century. [go back]
- Scattered accounts of giant bones from northern Siberia had existed for several centuries. Indeed, the tusks from fossil mammoths provided an important source of raw material for the ivory trade. Scientific interest in the Siberian mammoth intensified in the late 17th century and early 18th century after Western Europeans in the service of the Russian czar Peter the Great published eyewitness accounts and/or collected mammoth fossils. The new accounts and evidence led most scholars, including John Breyne of Danzig and Hans Sloan of London, to conclude that the Siberian mammoth was an elephant.
By 1796 the French anatomist Georges Cuvier concluded that the Siberian mammoth is not an elephant, but rather is an extinct relative commonly known as the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). This widely distributed species has also been collected from Big Bone Lick and elsewhere in North America. (See Woolly Mammoth.) [go back] - The extinction of animals was inconceivable for most European scientists of the 18th century. It ran counter to firmly held beliefs by both Christian and Deists of the perfect creation. Moreover, the fossils of both the Siberian mammoth and the "Ohio animal" were only a few thousand years old. Unlike many older fossils, which are commonly embedded in hard rock, these fossils were typically found in unconsolidated surficial deposits (e.g., wetlands muck, soil or gravel) or even ice. (See Fossils and Extinction.) [go back]
- George Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788) is widely regarded as the greatest naturalist or biologist of the 17th century and his 36 volume Histoire naturelle was the most influential natural history publication of the Enlightenment. In addition to this epic work, Buffon is best known for his innovative Des époques de la nature (Epochs of Nature) and his Theory of American Degeneracy. This last theory elicited a spirited rebuttal by Thomas Jefferson. [go back]