burst of radiation in Paleocene time and of most interesting early 

 representatives of many of the modem types. It was thus a time of 

 rapid change and striking events in the history of the mammals when 

 the balance of power, so to speak, gradually shifted from the old to 

 the new. During the latter part of the summer Assistant Curator 

 Turnbull and Chief Preparator Orville L. Gilpin returned to the 

 Washakie Basin of Wyoming to continue their systematic search for 

 fossils in that area (see page 34). Turnbull also made several short 

 trips in the Chicago area to investigate Pleistocene and post-Pleisto- 

 cene finds of mastodons and fossil elk, deer, and bison. 



The study of the Lower Devonian fishes of Utah and Wyoming 

 was advanced this year by the completion of a paper on the arthro- 

 dires, the third in a series by Dr. Robert H. Denison, Curator of 

 Fossil Fishes. He is currently working on a closely related fish fauna 

 in a collection made many years ago by Dr. J. Ernest Carman of 

 Ohio State University and presented to the Museum last year (see 

 Annual Report 1956, page 56) . The specimens were found in a lime- 

 stone quarry in northwestern Ohio in a lens of dark shale, presumably 

 a channel deposit, that is now completely covered and inaccessible. 

 Since it is unlikely that further material will ever be obtained in this 

 region. Dr. Carman's collection is of particular value. The euryp- 

 terids associated with the fishes have been described by Dr. Erik N. 

 Kjellesvig-Waering, now of the Pan-Jamaican Oil Company. Cura- 

 tor Denison, assisted by Preparator Bruce Erickson, and for a short 

 period by Dr. Rainer Zangerl, Curator of Fossil Reptiles, prospected 

 in the Devonian black shales of western New York in an attempt to 

 find a deposit that was rich enough in fossils to encourage quarrying 

 for them (see page 34) . Although fragmentary fishes were found in 

 many formations, the whole series of deposits proved to be too barren 

 to justify any attempt of this sort. Operations were then transferred 

 to central Pennsylvania, where a large series of late Silurian verte- 

 brates was obtained. 



The Mecca project, an extremely complex and detailed study of a 

 Pennsylvanian black-shale deposit in west-central Indiana that has 

 occupied Curator Zangerl and Dr. Eugene S. Richardson, Jr., Cura- 

 tor of Fossil Invertebrates, for the past several years (see Annual 

 Report 1956, page 52), reached the stage where an analysis of the 

 vast amount of data could begin. This involved the graphic repre- 

 sentation of the horizontal and vertical distributions of the fossils 

 and the fossil debris for every faunal element, the coprolites (fossil 

 faecal material), and the driftwood. All this information was then 

 correlated with the specific character of the various shale levels. 

 These vary in character with the relative amount of land-derived clay 



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