Mastodons had been uncovered long before Youth's Cabinet reprinted "Bones of a Mastodon," but this is perhaps the first of the works on fossils for young readers to describe one. Still, this jumble of huge bones doesn't give much of a sense of what the creature must have looked like; Robert Merry's Museum showed young readers a skeleton two years later.

http://www.merrycoz.org/cabinet/MASTODON.HTM

Pittsburg Advocate; from Youth's Cabinet, July 11, 1839, p. 112)

Our readers will recollect of reading some time last summer, of the discovery of the bones of a gigantic animal, in Crawford County, Ohio. The bones are now in Pittsburg, Pa. The bones of the head, including a number of grinders, are in a remarkable state of preservation, and some faint idea of what the living animal was may be formed, when we state that the skull and upper jaw are 3 feet three inches in length, and weigh 160 pounds, the lower jaw 77 pounds--the whole head, 237 pounds of dry bones! There are many other bones--legs, ribs, vertebræ, &c., all in a good state of perservation.--Pittsburg Advocate.


Copyright 2008, Pat Pflieger
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