The historical jawbone that Sampson used to pacify the Philistines, in the Bible story, had nothing on the jawbone of the Elephas Columbi, or Columbian elephant, which now reposes in the museum of Main Avenue High School. The two fragments of the jawbone measure, together, two feet in length. Each is about nine inches in height and six inches in thickness.
Embedded in each of the fragments are two teeth, each six inches long, four inches wide and extend about eight inches into the jawbone proper. The upper surfaces of each tooth are serrated and convoluted into ridges about one-quarter of an inch apart. The crown of the teeth is of a pearl white enamel in an excellent state of preservation. The dentin, or outer surface of the teeth, that part below the crown, has changed into a friable, chalk-like substance.
ROAMED YEARS AGO.
The roots of the teeth extend into the jawbone about seven inches and in one tooth the root is flat and wedge shaped. The jawbone proper has deteriorated with age and crumbles easily, the bone having a sponge-like appearance.
The Columbian elephant, the true American elephant as distinguished from the mammoth or mastodon, roamed over the Southern United States and Northern Mexico during the Pliocene period, some 500.000 to 600,000 years ago. Some archaeologists and geologists place it at 1,000,000 years ago. Numerous remains of this elephant have been found in Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California and Mexico. A skull, two tusks and a molar tooth were found at San Leon, near Houston, on Trinity Bay four years ago. The tusks measured over ten feet in length and the molar weighed more than 25 pounds, all were in an excellent state of preservation.
FOUND NEAR S. A.
The Columbian elephant was considerably larger than the Indian and African elephants, standing 11 feet high and weighing five to six tons. His tusks were generally straight but some curved specimens have been found, similar to those of the mastodon.
The specimens at Main Avenue High School were found by workmen digging in a gravel pit on the ranch of W. C. Rigsby, eight miles northwest of San Antonio on the Culebra Road, and were given to the school by County Commissioner Joe S. Newton
San Antonio Light, San Antonio, TX, October 3, 1925