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pg b182a: Fourth annual report of the Geological Survey of Texas Publication 5235917-4.

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182

miles east of Benjamin, I collected a few fragments of Mastodon and Equus, and at the same place a few years ago the femur of a large animal was found which was four feet and two inches in length, and with some others found there, was taken to Seymour and put on exhibition; but as usual, where everybody is permitted to handle such things, they were soon broken up and part of them carried away, and are now of no scientific value. Very often in sinking wells in this formation fossils are found, but they very seldom reach the hands of the scientist.

It is probable that this bed is contemporaneous with the beds seen by Prof. Cope and myself during the past season at Wild Horse creek, ten miles north of Big Springs, and again at McDonald's creek at the foot of the Staked Plains in Crosby county, and referred to elsewhere as Pleistocene.

I also made a small collection of fossils on Groesbeck creek, west of Quanah, which may be of the same age.

The correlation of these beds will have to be deferred until more material is collected and the fossils more definitely determined.

Some of the best farming lands in the west are on this broad plateau, and it is more thickly settled by farmers at this time than any other area in the northwest. Plenty of good water is found in wells ranging from 10 to 50 feet in depth.

I think it is more than probable that all the localities to which reference is made in the following pages and referred to the Pleistocene will be found to be embraced in these beds.

During the past season's field work, I collected from several localities distributed over an extensive area a number of fossil shells which I have referred to the Pleistocene. Some of the beds from which the shells were taken rested upon the red beds of the Permian, some on the Triassic. All of the localities mentioned are east of the Staked Plains except two, one of which is in Tule Canyon and the other on the west side of the plains, opposite Eddy, New Mexico.

The following is a description of the localities from which the material referred to was taken, and which was placed in the hands of Mr. J. A. Singley for identification.

WILD HORSE CREEK.

Wild Horse is a tributary of the Colorado river, having its source in a short canyon extending into the eastern margin of the Staked Plains. Its general course is nearly northwest. The prairie on both sides of the stream is very level and covered with mesquite grass. Into this broad prairie the creek has cut a wide channel more than 100 feet deep. Just above the bed of the present stream there is in places a broad valley that once constituted the flood plain of the old stream. The fossil shells

 

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