The online article is hard to read and the online OCR is full of errors. Hopefully someday time will allow a transcription of the information or if someone transcribes it first, please send us a copy! Contact Allen INGenWeb.
American Steel Dredge Company in Fort Wayne was an early manufacturer of steam shovels and river dredging equipment for dredging the Great Black Swamp, a leftover of the last ice age, spread over large areas of Northern Indiana and Ohio and other large swamp areas in other states.
During the last 500,000 years Indiana was largely covered by three different ice sheets. Only one-sixth of the state escaped this ice invasion. Remains of extinct animals such as mammoths, mastodons, giant beavers and ground sloths have been found in lakes and bogs left by glacial waters of sorthern Indiana. Bones, teeth, and antlers of such Far North inhabitants as musk oxen, caribou, moose, and elk also attest to the fact that Indiana's climate was much colder at times in the past. The glaciers have been much studied by the State Geological Survey and the associated Indiana University Department of Geology because of their effects on deposits of present-day natural resources such as sand and gravel and on occurrence of ground water. The inset shows the part of Indiana (unshaded) which was covered by the glaciers.
Indiana was once covered in ice…but what does that really mean? Join us as we slide through the Ice Age and discover what Indiana really looked like more than twelve thousand years ago. We’ll also discuss how the glaciers changed our state’s landscape forever.
If you traveled back in time to Indiana’s Ice Age, you’d find a land that looked familiar yet different. Animals that roam today’s forests shared the landscape with giants and unfamiliar predators. Join naturalist Jill Vance to explore the fascinating narrative of animal evolution and migration that transitioned Indiana’s fauna from the Ice Age to the Modern Age. Originally broadcast via Facebook LIVE on December 19, 2024. Learn more about Indiana's Ice Age at these locations... The "Frozen Reign" exhibit at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis: https://www.indianamuseum.org/galleries/frozen-reign/ Tour Indiana Caverns in southern Indiana, where tons of ice age animal fossils have been discovered: https://indianacaverns.com/ice-age-bones/
If you traveled back in time to Indiana’s Ice Age, you’d find a land that looked familiar yet different. Animals that roam today’s forests shared the landscape with giants and unfamiliar predators. Join naturalist Jill Vance to explore the fascinating narrative of animal evolution and migration that transitioned Indiana’s fauna from the Ice Age to the Modern Age. Originally broadcast via Facebook LIVE on December 19, 2024.
Learn more about Indiana's Ice Age at these locations...
Fred the Mastodon uploaded January 25, 2013by the IndianaStateMuseum on YouTube Fred the Mastodon will be the centerpiece of a new exhibit, Indiana's Ice Age Giants: The Mystery of Mammoths and Mastodons, opening Nov. 2013. Mounting this 13,000-year-old skeleton with 85% real bone was a long process, captured in part in this time-lapsed video.
1998 - Dan Buesching was digging up peat in the pond for the family peat buisness and hauled up a mastodon tooth-filled skull, leg bones, part of a pelvis, two large leg bones and other parts. IPFW students soon joined in the excavation, and in the end it turned out Buesching’s find was one of the most complete mastodon skeletons ever found in this part of the country. Read about the mounted skeleton now on display as Fred the Mastodon at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis in the newspaper article Prehistoric find finally on display by Frank Gray January 25, 2013 on The Journal Gazette newspaper archived on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
They donated the fossil to the Indiana State Museum where they have it on display. You can also visit the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at Science Central in Fort Wayne, Indiana to see the casting. Copied from Bueschings Peat Moss & Mulch About page. See Buesching Peat Moss.
Remains of a mastodon that perished millennia ago are being put back together at the University of Michigan. The skeleton of the 11,000-year-old female Owosso mastodon was taken apart this spring after standing inside the Ann Arbor school's natural history museum since 1947. Crews began reassembling her bones this week inside the new Biological Sciences Building next door to the museum. The ancient, elephant-like mammal eventually will stand beside a cast of the male Buesching mastodon that was found near Fort Wayne, Indiana. Both will be positioned in the five-story atrium of the U-M Museum of Natural History, which opens to the public in April. Copied from Mastodon skeleton reassembly gets underway at U. of Michigan by Mike Householder published August 12, 2018 by CBS WANE-TV NewsChannel 15.
The Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites secured Fred from the Buesching family in 2006 and spent more than a year having him mounted and prepared to be exhibited. His skeleton, which is about 9 feet tall and 25 feet long, has been on display since 2013. Copied from These Old Bones Will Tell Your Story, December 18, 2020, Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. Over 500 comments to October 6, 2023 post Where Have All The Mastodons Gone? about 2004 Mastodons on Parade art pieces made by FW artists including a comment about Fred.
MORE BONES--Two thigh bones, the bones of the lower extremities of the calf skeleton heretofore found, and some vertebrae and teeth, and part of the skull of another mastodon have been dug up at the mastodon burial ground near Huntertown. - That corn field is rather rich in fossil remains.
A tooth and part of the jawbone of a mastodon were dug up in Waltz township, in this county, one day this week weighing some twenty-five pounds. The tooth is in an excellent state of perservation, and measures across the Crown about eight inches, and is about the same length from the crown to the lowest point.-- Wabash Plaindealer.
If in fact they were taken to Chicago, we can only wonder if they survived the “Great Fire” of Oct. 7 and 8, 1871, which destroyed practically every building in the heart of the city.
In this article under The Locality it states: In size the skeleton was less than that discovered some years ago near Huntertown and cremated in Chicago by the fire of October 8th, 1871, and much less than the skeleton dicovered south of Arcola a few years ago.
It had long been accepted that the first discovery of mastodon bones took place in 1931. Found by 10-year-old Donovan Harper in a patch of muck south of Cromwell, they were removed by representatives of the Buffalo Museum of Natural History, where they are now on display.
An announcement that had appeared in an Albion weekly paper of Feb. 26, 1931, described a discovery of “fossilized remains” on the Fred Danner farm northwest of Wawaka. It was claimed that they were better preserved than those found a few months earlier in Sparta Township and sold to the Buffalo museum.
An interest had been shown in the Wawaka specimen had been shown by the geology section of the state conservation department which had considered its excavation and purchase for the state museum. Paul F. Simpson of the geology department spent several days inspecting the teeth and sections of bone, before it was decided that the expense involved in digging up the remains and installing them in the Indiana museum would be prohibitive. At that time it was observed that in past years several significant finds of prehistoric remains had been made in Indiana, only to have them taken out-of-state.
In a lengthy and well-documented account in the Fort Wayne Gazette of April 29, 1867, it appears that just a few days earlier discovery of a mammal took place in Swan Township, Noble County.
It was found in the farm field of William Thrush, whose Noble County farm bordered Allen County about four miles north of Huntertown. Discovered by a ditch-digging crew, the large skeleton was standing erect under about 4 feet of muck. Dr. J.S. Fuller, whose expertise was not revealed, examined the bones and declared they were remains of an “elephant” buried at least 100 years earlier.
A follow-up article appearing in the Gazette five months later remained enthusiastic and correctly referred to a “mastodon.” A total of three partial skeletons were eventually unearthed, with various theories offered as to how they became mired down and “got stuck.”
The bones were stored at the nearby residence of James Potter at Potter’s Station (later Ari). It had been named for the Galucia Potter family on the line of the Detroit & Eel River Railroad (later Pennsylvania) which ran diagonally through the southeast corner of Noble County, intersecting with the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad at Grand Rapids Crossing (now LaOtto).
The Gazette article concluded “The remains, we understand, will be taken to the Chicago Academy of Natural Sciences for more careful examination.”
If in fact they were taken to Chicago, we can only wonder if they survived the “Great Fire” of Oct. 7 and 8, 1871, which destroyed practically every building in the heart of the city.
Perhaps the best-known mastodon whose remains have been retained in Indiana are those of a restored skeleton displayed in the first floor in Kettler Hall on IPFW’s Fort Wayne campus.
reports on the front page of the Oct. 2, 1933, issue of The Garrett Clipper, two highway workers uncovered bones and teeth that appeared to belong to a great prehistoric animal in the right-of-way of federal highway 27 two miles south of Garrett on Sept. 29, 1933. The pair stopped digging, awaiting instruction from the state highway commission. An Indiana mastodon, found south of Garrett near the corner at S.R. 327 and C. R. 5 in 1933, is at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The skeleton was dismantled several years ago due to instability, but it was in the process of restoration. Denver museum restoring Garrett’s mastodon, Sue Carpenter, Mar 29, 2017 Updated Mar 30, 2017 on KPCNews.
Taylor Professor Thinks Bones Are Those Of Mastodon
H. D. McEowen, of Fort Wayne and owner of the farm southeast of Collins where the large bones were dug up some days ago, reports that Dr. Bushey, head of the science department at Taylor University at Upland says he is "reasonably sure" that the bones are those of a mastodon.
Mr. McEowen also wrote to Indiana University, giving a description of the bones, but has not received a reply from there.
He stated that no more digging has been done in an effort to find the skull or other bones of the prehistoric beast whose remains were uncovered while bulldozing for a drainage pond. Ray Geyer lives on the farm.
A video of an 1897 Laurel Spindler discovery in Fairfield Township tar pit.
Mastodons roamed what is now Indiana during the Ice Age, and their remains have been found in every county in the state. In the late 19th Century the remains of a mastodon were discovered in DeKalb County- this is his story.
Mastodons roamed what is now Indiana during the Ice Age, and their remains have been found in every county in the state. In the late 19th Century the remains of a mastodon were discovered in DeKalb County- this is his story.
Prof, L. W. Dorn, Concordia college, was about to investigate on the reported mastodon remains farm of Mrs. Oliver Smith, Jefferson township. [Whitley County]
David Carter, son of Ottis Carter, Smith township, found a mastodon tooth on a highway near his home. It was in fresh gravel applied to the road. The gravel came from the David Pence pit (Burd pit) near Blue River Methodist church.
What is believed to be a mastodon skeleton has been found on the Leonard Rapp property on the northeast shore of Blue Lake near new camping ground.
About two months ago a ditch had been made around a muck fire. On Saturday after Thanksgiving two Churubusco eighth grade boys, Mike Adams and Rich Bailey were playing and noticed the big teeth and what they believed was a stump. Digging was started last Saturday and now portions of the skeleton have been unearthed.
Mr. Rapp spoke at the fall meeting of the Whitley County Historical Society on the early Indians around Blue Lake and exhibited several types of Indian relics.
A portion of a mastodon jaw is the Whitley County museum in the courthouse.
Is this the same mastodon skeleton?
Look at the size of those teeth! This mastodon jaw was discovered in Whitley County and is on display at the Whitley...
Look at the size of those teeth! This mastodon jaw was discovered in Whitley County and is on display at the Whitley County Historical Museum.
Mastodons were similar to the woolly mammoth but had straighter tusks as well as different teeth and eating habits. They lived in North America during the Pleistocene period from at least 3.75 million years ago until about 11,000 years ago before going extinct.
Osage Oranges, Maclura pomifera, hedge apples, was sometimes used as living fences before barb wire became popular in the 1870s. Is native to the south-central states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Early French explorers referred to the species as bois d’arc or “wood for a bow”. Sometimes mentioned in early history books.
Pictured here is the fruit of Maclura pomifera (a.k.a., Osage Orange), a species in the mulberry family (Moraceae) considered native to the south-central United States (Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas) that has become naturalized in parts of the eastern United States.* The inedible fruit–which only resembles an orange–is “a syncarp of drupes covered with a rind and when opened oozes a latex sap.”* In other words, “Osage oranges are pome fruit or fruit that has a core of seeds inside an edible fleshy casing. Better known examples of pome fruit include apples and pears.”** As Master Gardener Linda Sedar writes in a Penn State Extension article, these fruit in Pennsylvania are often referred to as “monkey balls.”***
As the “fruit is far too large to be consumed by wildlife species roaming our landscape today but not those of the past,” writes Emily Swihart for Illinois Extension, “[i]t seems that Osage oranges are anachronistic fruit, meaning they belong to another time. Scientists hypothesize that the Osage orange belongs to the Age of Great Mammals, also known as the Pleistocene, when herbivores far larger than any that remain today roamed North America. Fossil records tell of megafauna roaming the North American landscape including mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, and glyptodon.”**
To learn more about this fascinating species, check out the articles cited below!
** “Massive fruit, myths, and mastodons: Osage orange,” Emily Swihart (Horticulture Educator), Illinois Extension, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Nov. 11, 2022) (https://extension.illinois.edu/.../2022-11-11-massive...). [article states: The superior wood strength of the species was appreciated by native tribes and used for tools, especially bows for hunting. People would travel hundreds of miles to harvest trees suitable for crafting the weapon to the extent that early French explorers referred to the species as bois d’arc or “wood for a bow”. ... Osage oranges are anachronistic fruit, meaning they belong to another time. Scientists hypothesize that the Osage orange belongs to the Age of Great Mammals, also known as the Pleistocene, when herbivores far larger than any that remain today roamed North America. Fossil records tell of megafauna roaming the North American landscape including mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, and glyptodon. similar to mammals of today, these megafaunas would have dispersed seeds of vegetation they consumed. The Osage orange, perhaps, developed large fruit for these prehistoric megafaunas.]
We hunt the oldest Bois d’Arc trees in the richest hunting grounds of northeast Texas along the RedRiver. Here’s a handful of the oldest lowland Bois d’Arc giants, the oldest 350-400 years old . We have located numerous 300 year old and currently working with land owners to preserve the landmarks trees for future generation. was posted November 23, 2023 by Bois DArc Kingdom on Big Tree Seekers on Facebook with photos.
It’s not every day you see a mastodon femur! 👀 Representatives from Buesching's Peat Moss & Mulch spoke to our...
Representatives from Buesching's Peat Moss & Mulch spoke to our Prehistoric Explorers summer camp about the discovery of American mastodon remains on their property in 1998.
Campers learned about how the mastodon bones were excavated and ultimately reassembled.
Castings were made of those bones and a replica of Fred the Mastodon has been on permanent display at Science Central since 2007.
Buesching's Peat Moss & Mulch, the event’s presenting sponsor
