Page:Oregon, End of the Trail.djvu/54



the fascinating story of Oregon's ancient eons. Plant life of the Pliocene epoch was not represented in Dr. Condon's finds; but in 1936 the discovery of flora fossils of that epoch, in the Deschutes River gorge nine miles west of Madras, filled the one gap existing in the record.

The oreodonts, an interesting group of animals now extinct, were formerly abundant in the lower lake region of the John Day Valley. Oreodonts ranged in size from that of a coyote to that of an elk. These animals had the molar teeth of a deer, the side teeth of a hog, and the incisors of a carnivore. Oreodonts, rhinoceroses, and peccaries are in the Condon collection of fossils. The well defined metacarpal bone of a camel was found in the gray stone of a former lake bed near The Dalles, and fossils found in other regions of the State indicate a probability that the camel once roamed much of the Pacific Northwest.

The fossil head of a seal found in 1906 and that of a giant sea turtle found embedded in sandstone near the Oregon coast in 1939 prove that these primitive species lived in that section when the ocean still covered western Oregon. Seal fossils have also been found in the Willamette Valley. In southeastern Oregon, in the vicinity of Silver (or Fossil) Lake, were discovered the fossil bones of a wide variety of birds. This region has also yielded the remains of a mylodon—a great sloth as large as a grizzly bear—four kinds of camel, a mammoth elephant, three species of primitive horse, and many smaller animals.

A notable fossil recovery was that of the mesohippus, a tiny threetoed horse, found in 1866 by men digging a well near the Snake River not far from Walla Walla in eastern Washington. Taken to The Dalles and given to Dr. Condon, who identified them, these bones brought attention to the "equus beds" of eastern Washington and Oregon.

The mastodon and mammoth have left abundant fossil remains in Oregon. A fine specimen of the broad-faced ox, precursor of the bison, was dredged from the Willamette River. Fossil remains of the ground sloth, though rare, have been found in Yamhill County and in the John Day Valley. Remains of the rhinoceros are plentiful in the large lake beds. The Suidae, or hog family, is represented in the lower lake regions by several species, the largest of which is the entelodont. Fossils of a musk deer and of the head of a primitive cat about the size of the present-day cougar were found in the north fork of the John Day River. This area also abounded in early ages with saber-toothed cats.