UNIVERSITY RECEIVES A PLEISTOCENE SMILODON

The skull of a smilodon, the largest of the saber-tooth tigers, will within a very few days be mounted for exhibition as a free-standing skeleton in the fossil mammal room of the University Museum. It was given to Harvard in exchange by W. D. Matthew, professor of Paleontology at the University of California.

The saber-tooth tiger was a common animal in North America during the Pleistocene age, but the genus is now extent. The specimen now in the Museum was found in Rancho La Brea, near Los Angeles. The region was formerly a tar pool, but is now an asphalt deposit. Animals became trapped in the tar pool when they came to eat other animals caught in the tar.