Yes, I am well aware that the word “peccary”, sounds like a Victorian prophylactic. Gentle reader, a peccary is a prehistoric pig. Some survive to this day in warmer climates. It is interesting to note the presence of quite a few Platygonus compressions in an urban cave near St. Louis.
1947 saw George Gaylord Simpson, a paleontologist so well-known that Isaac Asimov honored him with reverence. He discovered peccary skulls under Chatillon-DeMenil and Lemp mansions. They had been here at least 20,000 years before Laclede or Chouteau, long before the Osage. They were not pigs. Their tusks were not alarming but were primarily used to cut roots. They stood about 20 inches from the shoulders of gentle vegetarians.
Simpson was a persnickety and frail little man. His ginger hair fell out early, his lips thinned with age, and his lips were a bit wavy. Simpson had found dinosaur bones. He had discovered several large, heavy-legged creatures while searching for fossils in Patagonia. They all might have died suddenly from volcanic eruptions. He named them Scarrittia in honor of his wealthy donor. He would find eight skulls from Eohippus the “dawn horses,” over the next ten years. These skulls were one of our Derby contenders’ prehistoric ancestors.
Simpson was already chair of paleontology and geology at the American Museum of Natural History by the time the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion owner gave him a mysterious bone. He packed everything and flew to St. Louis. There he set up camp and transformed the first floor of the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion into a bone laundry. Lee Hess, the owner of the cave, wanted to make it a tourist attraction so he had the wet clay removed. The contents of a mass grave had been thrown out.
What was the cause of their deaths? Simpson concluded that the animals likely fell into a fissure or sinkhole near the cave. Simpson ruled that many bones, possibly hundreds of thousands, were found in the sinkhole or fissure. They were then buried in clay and mud that had been washed over them. The cave somehow washed away the accumulation of clay, bones, and other materials.
Simpson wrote with glee about his discovery in Natural History Magazine. He noted that “Extinct animals are rarely found in the heart of great cities.” He returned to New York but it is believed that he entertained the rest of the world with our peccary. Simpson is said to have had a conversation with Louis Leakey and Charles Darwin’s granddaughter, Simpson.
Today, the cave’s entry is closed. Let the pigs go to sleep.
