A LIST, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND INDEX OF THE FOSSIL VERTEBRATES OF LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI DARYL P. DOMNING1 Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana ABSTRACT Species of fossil vertebrates reported from Louisiana and Mississippi are listed. The bibliography consists of 167 titles and contains detailed annotations on vertebrates from those states. Both systematic and chronologic-geographic indexes are provided. A BRIEF HISTORY OF these deposits had been generally recognized. In 1828 VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY Richard Harlan, a Philadelphia physician and anatomist IN LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI and the American Philosophical Society's expert on fossil bones, described the skull of a sperm whale which had Louisiana and Mississippi are not usually thought of as been disinterred near the mouth of the river some time areas possessing significant numbers of fossil vertebrates. before. (According to Harlan it had previously been Compared with many other parts of the United States, described as a giant reptile, "Megistosaurus", by John they seem to be among the least productive in this regard; Davidson Godman, in a paper which apparently was never but it would be more accurate to say they are among the published.) A very similar find was that of a large baleen most neglected. In fact, this region contains quite respect­ whale skull unearthed a few miles above New Orleans and able fossil faunas — principally Cretaceous, Eocene, and described in 1837 in two articles by A. E. A. Riviere. J. Pleistocene in age — and includes several classic localities E. DeKay, in 1842, illustrated a rorqual skull found about of considerable interest in the history of the science as a 1837, said to be from the mouth of the Mississippi, but whole. probably it was the same specimen described by Riviere. We have, of course, no way of knowing when man first Although these finds were generally understood to be of noticed fossil bones in the Louisiana-Mississippi region. subrecent origin, Leidy thought it best to include in his Culin (1900) mentions several Indian mounds in the 1869 list of fossil mammals a specimen which was vicinity of Natchez in which, apparently, mastodon bones probably DeKay's. And even in 1872 F. V. Hopkins and shark teeth were found. Indeed, it has been demon­ mentioned, along with genuine fossils from Louisiana, strated that man was a contemporary of the large Late some cetacean remains dredged from Bayou Lafourche. Pleistocene mammals in this area, e.g., by the fossil human pelvis from Natchez and the artifacts associated Louisiana gained international fame in paleontological with extinct animals at Avery Island. circles as early as 1834, when Harlan described some bones from the banks of the Ouachita River in present- But excluding Natchez Man from the roster of students day Caldwell Parish, sent to the American Philosophical of prehistoric Mississippi vertebrates, the earliest notice of Society in 1832 by Judge H. Bry of Arkansas. (It is fossil bones in this area seems to have been that of Martin sometimes erroneously stated in the older literature that Duralde (1804), who stated that bones had been found in the original locality was in Arkansas.) Harlan thought the "Apelousas" (Opelousas) area of Louisiana and that they belonged to a giant Tertiary marine reptile, which he an elephant skeleton had been discovered at "Carancro called Basilosaurus, or "king of the lizards". They soon bay" about 1760. The locality was apparently the modern attracted the attention of scientists in Europe, notably Sir Bayou Carencro, on the southern border of St. Landry Richard Owen, to whom Harlan showed some Alabama Parish. Duralde, the Spanish commandant of the Apelou­ specimens of the animal when he visited London in 1839. sas district, described the finds in a letter to William Owen, however, realized that the beast was a mammal, Dunbar, a well-born Scottish immigrant, surveyor, and and soon convinced Harlan, whereupon the two agreed plantation owner who was at that time the outstanding that Harlan's name was inappropriate and substituted scientist-in-residence of the Natchez region. Dunbar passed Owen's name Zygodon (see Owen, 1839), later changed the information along, with some observations of his own, to Zeuglodon cetoides. Needless to say, this gentlemen's to his correspondent Thomas Jefferson, President of the agreement has no validity under modern rules of nomen­ American Philosophical Society, to which Dunbar be­ clature, and the correct name of this primitive whale is longed. Both reports were published in 1804. (See also Basilosaurus cetoides (Owen). It was the first archaeocete Mitchill, 1818.) whale to be discovered, and since then several other genera have been found in the Jackson Eocene beds of A human skull and goat horn that Duralde also re­ Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. ported having been dug up and some human teeth mentioned by Dunbar were no doubt of Recent origin; Several of them combined, in fact, to produce a the confusion of Pleistocene and modern remains, and celebrated semi-hoax of the 1840's, Professor A. C. their mixture in many deposits, is a problem that faces Koch's great "sea serpent", the "Hydrargos", which he collectors in the area even today (cf. Arata, 1964a). concocted out of numerous bones of Basilosaurus and Several notable instances of this confusion, involving other archaeocetes that he had collected in Alabama. whale remains from the lower Mississippi delta, occurred Koch, a rather notorious would-be scientist and entrepre­ in the nineteenth century, before the subrecent origin of neur of German origin and dubious training, also travelled and collected in Mississippi and Louisiana, and noted the 1 Present address: University of California, Berkeley, California. presence of "Zeuglodon" bones there (Koch, 1857). The 385 386 TRANSACTIONS-GULF COAST ASSOCIATION OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES Volume XIX, 1969 huge cylindrical vertebrae are common and were probably agency, Wailes acquired an unusual knowledge of the not hard to spot, especially since, as several early writers Mississippi Territory, and travelled often to Opelousas and note, they were used by the local residents as andirons other parts of Louisiana as well. His inclination towards and as supports under the corners of cabins, practices natural history, like Carpenter's, was stimulated by Audu­ which may well continue to the present day. He collected bon, who came to Natchez in 1822 and stayed for a numerous specimens and exhibited them in many cities of while at the Wailes plantation. Thereafter Wailes associ­ Europe and America, including, in 1853, Natchez ated regularly with other amateur and professional natu­ (Sydnor, 1938: 195) and New Orleans (Dana, 1875). ralists in the area and did his best to encourage interest in Kellogg (1936) gives a detailed history of archaeocete science and agriculture and to support local learned discoveries. societies and publications. In 1838 W. M. Carpenter, a native of West Feliciana Among his many interests were the fossil bones of the Parish and later a professor at the Louisiana Medical region, which he collected as avidly as anything else. Soon College (forerunner of Tulane University), published the after 1830 he excavated most of a mostodon skeleton. In first notice of Pleistocene vertebrate remains from an 1842 M. W. Dickeson, a young Pennsylvania physician important locality which has received little attention until and naturalist who was travelling and collecting up and recently, Little Bayou Sara in West Feliciana Parish. It is down the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, arrived in Natchez one of several small streams in that parish and neigh­ and with Wailes and others spent two days collecting boring Wilkinson County, Mississippi, the gravel bars of bones in Mammoth Bayou, a large ravine near the city which contain numerous bones of large and small animals. which had been eroded in only the previous 30 years or This rather remote region seems thereafter to have been so, and which was already known for its fossil mammals practically ignored by collectors until the present decade, (Quimby, 1956). To encourage the neighboring planters when the investigations of A. A. Arata and others dis­ to collect more bones, Dickeson wrote an article (1842) closed a considerable array of large and small mammals in the Southern Planter, a local scientific and agricultural and species unrecorded elsewhere in the central coastal journal, describing the Natchez fossils and mammoth plain. remains from elsewhere in the nation. In his early years Carpenter's interest in nature was The Bayou continued to yield bones. On May 6, 1845, stimulated by contact with John James Audubon, who Benjamin Silliman, Jr., read papers from Dickeson and was working in the area, and later he was Sir Charles Wailes before the meeting of the Association of American Lyell's guide to the natural history of the region (Cocks, Geologists and Naturalists in New Haven. The former 1914). He made a variety of contributions to geology, reported on Natchez geology and remains of "a curious botany, and medicine. The paper cited above (1838a) non- descript quadruped" which apparently lacked eyes includes what appear to be the earliest illustrations of (!); this seems to have been the ground sloth Mylodon, fossil vertebrates from Louisiana or Mississippi, figures of which, lacking a postorbital process, does not have con­ horse and mastodon teeth; and in 1842 he reported the spicuously developed eye sockets. But Wailes's communi­ first fossil tapir found in the Gulf coastal plain, also from cation, a brief note on the geology and fossils of Missis­ the Opelousas area. sippi, apparently had appended to it a surprising an­ nouncement: the discovery (probably by Dickeson) of But these small, scattered localities were soon eclipsed part of a human innominate bone, associated with extinct in the eyes of researchers by the increasing prominence of animals, in Mammoth Bayou. (I do not know precisely the Natchez region.