State

Prehistoric Animals of the Coastal Plains Fossil discoveries track the lives of giant beasts which Inhabited North Carolina in the distant past. B»/ LEWIS PHILIP HALL It is hard In visualize the sandy chain of island beaches that com¬ prise our North Carolina coast as a land of fertile and grassy plains and dense forests. Yet, geographical records reveal the fact that near the Virginia-North Caro¬ lina line on the Outer Banks, at a spot now known as Wash Woods, the stumps of live-oak, red cedar, cypress and mulberry trees were exposed after Hurricane “Connie” eroded the beach at that point in 1955. Apparently an extensive forest grew' and flourished here at some time in the dim and distant past. On August 22, 1964 the Wilming¬ ton Morning Star reported that Miss Mac C. Walker of New York City, discovered on the sands of Shell Is¬ land, the jaw plate of a pre-historic mastodon, which plate contained four teeth. In the spring of 1929, Ellis Edwin Foster, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, found on the sands of Wright, sville Beach, the bones of a pre-historic horse. Grassy Banks Both the mastodon and the horse, Equus leidyi, were herbivorous, and our island beaches at that time must have provided a suitable environment. During the Pleistocene Period, about a million years ago, ice sheets i a up to ten thousand feel thick spread over North America and advanced as far south as New Jersey. At that time the sea shore of the North Carolina Coastal Plains, and the East Coast generally, was 90 miles east of its present position. It is the theory that the vast salt marshes between the pres¬ ent outer banks and the North Caro¬ lina mainland, were at that time ex¬ tensive swamps, beyond which were thick forests and grassy plains. At the end of the Ice Age the seas again began to encroach upon the land and are today gradually eat¬ ing away our eastern seaboard. Castle Hayne Formation Going back many millions of years before the Ice Age, at various times in the earth’s history, the seas had risen and flooded the continent, later retreating, draining the water from the land and leaving a geological his¬ tory in the sediments they left behind. At some time during the late Eocene Period there was an uplift of the land in coastal North Carolina that raised the region between the Cape Fear River and the Santee River in South Carolina. This uplift, which existed until the middle Miocene Pe¬ riod, is spoken of as the “Great Caro¬ lina Ridge” or “The Cape Fear Up¬ lift.” At that time the sea invaded the land both north and south of the ridge. South of the ridge the sediment, or formation, laid down by this sea is named the Santee limestone, while north of the ridge it has been called the Castle Hayne formation. Named by B. L. Miller in 1912, from the village of Castle Hayne in New Han¬ over County, it extends from Wilming¬ ton northeast to the Ncusc River and just beyond, and consists of finely broken calcareous marl. The Natural Well Two miles southwest of Magnolia, N. C., in Duplin County, is the famous Natural W'ell in which so many Miocene fossils have been found. It is a circular sink hole, 75 to 100 feet in diameter and about 30 feet deep. One wall is very steep but on one side it is somewhat slop¬ ing so that it is possible to reach the bottom, where there is a pond about 30 feet in diameter. The fauna from the Natural W'ell is exceedingly rich and over 400 species of fossils have been reported from there. The bones of pre-historic whales have also been uncovered in the old marl pits near Clinton in Sampson County, and also in Pitt, Wayne and Hertford counties. Sharks, teeth were dug from the banks of the Lumber River, near Lumbcrton, a distance of 83 miles from our present coast. These fossil deposits extend from the coast to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Reptile Age Each layer of soil as seen today represents a space of time from one of the geological periods, and layers have been exposed in our State that Display of mastodon bones at the N. C. Museum of Natural History includes several teeth (bock); the light-colored objects are foot and ankle banes and о skull fragment; and the dark- colared object (middle left) is a "peat block." — (Museum photos by Jonathon Montague.) THE STATE, October IS, 196B