Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/17

 A GLIMPSE INTO PREHISTORIC OREGON 9 demic, or have been killed by fierce wolves or other flesh-eating- animals. From whatever cause our long line American horses and camels seem to have entirely disappeared. But in spite of the loss of the camel and the horse, some very large animals lived on the shores of the Willamette Sound. There was a great ground sloth, the Mylodon, whose an- cestors had recently come from South America over the newly- made Isthmus of Panama. He was larger than the rhinoceros, a great, clumsy creature with massive limbs armed with long, stout claws. Professor Owen, the English scientist, thought that instead of climbing trees, as do his smaller modern rela- tives, Mylodon planted himself firmly on his great heels and broad, stout tail, then grasped the tree with his strong arms and worked and wrestled until the tree was either broken off or pulled up by the roots, when he was ready to dine on its juicy twigs and leaves. He seems not to have been a very dangerous animal and perhapsi could not defend himself against the wolves, bears and great cats that must have been so common in our Oregon woods. There was also a large ancestor of the buffalo, the Broad Faced Ox, with horns larger and head wider than the modern buffalo, and skull so thick that it left but little room for brains. It lived along the Columbia River and undoubtedly roamed in herds all over the northwest. But perhaps the most common animal around the Willamette Sound was the elephant. There were at least two kinds, the Mastodon and the Mammoth. The Mastodon was much like the elephants we have seen in the, circus or menagerie, except as to its grinding teeth. It must have found abundant food in Oregon, for it lived in part upon the tender shoots of spruce and fir trees. But the most interesting of the elephant family was the enormous mammoth which is said to have "weighed more than twice as much as the largest modern elephant and was almost one-third taller." He lived in all parts of North America and Europe and some very fine specimens or mum- mies, after being kept in cold storage for thousands of years, were taken from the ice or frozen ground of Siberia, with not