1939: Palaeontology, Vertebrate

Field Work.

The California Institute of Technology continued its search of the Lower Oligocene Sespe beds of Southern California with gratifying results. At Berkeley the University of California group made their annual expedition to the Triassic of Arizona and New Mexico and continued their delving into the Pliocene faunas of Nevada and Northern California. Intensive work in the Late Tertiaries of the western part of the state was carried on by the museum staff of the University of Nebraska.

Field Museum of Chicago sent successful expeditions into the Pliocene of South Dakota and into the Palaeocene beds of Colorado and the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh continued the work it has been carrying on for years in the Upper Eocene of northeastern Utah. The National Museum continued its work in the Paleocene of Central Utah and Princeton University again explored the Lower Eocene of the Big Horn Basin, Wyoming.

Harvard University added materially to its collection by an expedition into the Permian of Texas, and the American Museum for the third consecutive season collected in the Oligocene deposits of western South Dakota and did reconnaissance work in the Cretaceous of Texas, Montana and Alberta.

The State of Texas, with WPA assistance, inaugurated a statewide reconnaissance program for the purpose of locating important fossil bearing formations and localities.

Exhibitions.

Of first importance was the opening at the American Museum in New York of the so-called Jurassic Hall, in which there is a new geological arrangement of amphibians and reptiles from the Carboniferous to the Basal Cretaceous.

In the old dinosaur hall there is a rearrangement of Upper Cretaceous dinosaurs and the installation of new exhibits of pterosaurs, turtles, crocodiles and birds. The corridor connecting these two halls now contains the marine reptiles and dinosaur tracks. A remarkable skeleton of the Early Pleistocene gaur, from China, has been placed in the Tertiary Hall.

At the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia a new hall devoted to the earth sciences, including vertebrate palaeontology, was opened. The Harvard Museum placed on exhibition a skull of the giant Australian plesiosaur Kronosarus and added to its exhibition of Brazilian Triassic reptiles; at Field Museum several skeletons of Tertiary mammals were installed and a complete rearrangement of their fossil vertebrate collection was begun.

The Colorado Museum of Natural History in Denver has completed a skeleton of the plated dinosaur Stegosaurus and the University Museum at Lincoln. Neb., has added to its already remarkable collection of Nebraska fossils a skeleton of the greatest of all camels Gigantocamelus.

Under this heading should be mentioned the progress toward completion of work on the Dinosaur National Monument of northeastern Utah where, eventually, there will be shown, under glass roofs, complete skeletons of the great Sauropod dinosaurs worked out in high relief against their rocky beds.

Research and Publications.

A publication of great interest to vertebrate palaeontologists was the autobiography of the dean of American Palaeontologists, Professor William B. Scott, A. S. Romer continued his studies on late Paleozoic branchiosaurs, and in addition, described the first-known cotylosaurian egg. One of the most important palaeontological papers of the year was the monographic study by T. E. White of the complete skeleton of Seymouria, an exceptionally important vertebrate from the evolutionary standpoint. R. L. Nace described the first Cretaceous ichthyosaur known in North America from adequate remains. C. W. Gilmore made an additional contribution to the study of the ceratopsian dinosaurs, while active research on this group was continued by B. Brown and E. M. Schlaikjer.

W. K. Gregory and M. Hellman contributed a valuable study upon the relationships and anatomy of the South African man-apes, discovered by R. Broom; G. G. Simpson with the collaboration of A. Roe, published 'Quantitative Zoology,' a definitive textbook applying for the first time the use of statistical methods to the study of fossil and recent animals; G. L. Gazin continued his work on the Dragon Paleocene formation of Utah, which has yielded a new and important fauna; B. Patterson continued his series of papers dealing with proto-ungulates; E. H. Colbert described Miocene horses and carnivores of Mongolia and in addition, with R. Chaffee, contributed a study on the evolution of antilocaprids. A. L. Lugn made a definitive study of the sequence of Tertiary mammal-bearing deposits in Nebraska; E. H. Barbour and C. B. Schultz described a new, gigantic camel, by far the largest camelid known, from the Pleistocene of that state; R. A. Stirton made a detailed study of all of the fossil mammals from the San Francisco Bay region, and in addition considered the problems of holarctic correlation as based upon mammals; a paper of general interest was Gaynor Evan's study of the evolution of the atlas-axis complex, from fish to mammal. See also GEOLOGY; SEISMOLOGY.