The Species Seekers Quiz: Name that Beast

What is the celebrated Incognitum?

A. A secretive relative of the gorilla

B.  A mastodon

3.  The oldest fossil of a fish

4.  Darwin's second vessel

And the answer is …

A mastodon.

In the spring of 1705, in the Hudson River village of Claverack, New York, a rainstorm eroded a steep bluff and spalled out a tooth the size of a man's fist.  Lord Cornbury, the eccentric governor of New York (his enemies said he liked to dress up as Queen Anne) sent it off to the natural philosophers at the Royal Society ...