mong the "objects worthy of notice" listed by Thomas Jefferson
in his instructions to Meriwether Lewis were "the remains or
accounts of any [animals] which may be deemed rare or extinct,"
such as the mammoth and the "megalonyx"--Jefferson's
hypothetical "enormous animal incognitum."1 Meriwether Lewis,
his innate curiosity combined with an exceptional capacity for
concentration and analysis, learned as much as Jefferson and
Caspar Wistar could teach him about the new science which nearly
fifty years later would be called paleontology. En route down
the Ohio River in the autumn of 1803, he made a short side trip
to Big Bone Lick, near Covington, Kentucky, which had recently
been excavated by a Cincinnati physician, Dr. William Goforth.
Lewis wrote Jefferson the details of his visit, promising to
send him a tusk of a mammoth, two "grinders," and several other
specimens. Unfortunately, the shipment went astray. In1807
Jefferson hired William Clark to supervise a new excavation
there. During the expedition, howeve