Even as an elephant-like view of Siberian mammoths and European “giant” fossils came finally into focus, the picture in America became suddenly stranger.
In the summer of 1739, a French Canadian military mission stumbled upon something astonishing on the poorly mapped “Ohio Country” frontier. Travelling down the Ohio River on their way south from Montreal to battle the Chickasaw, a fleet of war canoes carrying 123 French soldiers and 319 Native American warriors stopped to make camp in an area that is now part of Kentucky. A group of Native Americans* set out to hunt for meat to feed the army, but returned to camp with unexpected marvels: a gigantic leg bone, teeth, and tusks.
The expedition’s leader Baron de Longueuil was impressed with the hunters’ discovery. He ordered the fossils loaded onto the canoes. Later, after the French abandoned their failed fight against the Chickasaw, Longueuil took the fossils with him to France, where he donated the teeth and leg bone to the French king’s private museum of curiosities. (Today these historic fossils are preserved at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.**)