Prehistory: Paleontology
							"Sugar" The Sugar Loaf Mastodon Discovered in May of 1972 on a black dirt farm near the Warwick-Chester border. Sugar has been radio-carbon dated at 9860—between 7685 B.C. and 8135 B.C. The bones lay at a depth of five feet below the surface of the ground in an area which had once been a small glacial lake and today is a drained and fertile bog planted in lettuce and celery. It appears that the animal either died of natural causes and toppled into the lake, or became mired and drowned. No evidence was found to suggest that it had been killed by man, although that possibility cannot be discounted inasmuch as man and mastodon were contemporaries in Orange County. (Radio-carbon dating at Dutchess Quarry Cave places Early Man in the County at 10,580 B.C.)
			Geology: The high peat content of the bogs which formed the Black Dirt preserved fossil evidence. The Black Dirt, or Drowned Lands, was once a vast lake and swamp called today by scientists “Glacial Lake Fairchild”.
								The first mastodon skeleton exhibited in North America was found near Newburgh in 1817. A mastodon skeleton was found in Chester’s black dirt in 1817. More about Peale’s Mastodon
	Living Environment: Species change over time