25 



not enough stations taken by each type in each environment to permit 

 strictly vahd comparisons between either environments within the Gulf 

 of California region or other environments in other parts of the world. 

 The results as given here, do give one an idea of some of the animals living in 

 the various parts of the region, which from a strictly zoogeographical view- 

 point is valuable, since few studies have been made in one region from 

 shore to over 4,000 meters. The text of this program and sample results 

 can be obtained from the author or Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 



The stations and consequent species groupings for the various environ- 

 ments in the Gulf of California, correspond very closely to environments 

 which were thought to exist from the subjective appraisal of these data. 

 These computor groupings were devised by almost a purely mathamatical 

 process, which will give nearly the same result regardless of operator. Once 

 the program had been written, new data could be added quickly and the 

 matrix repeated in a few minutes of machine time. It would have taken 

 many months to carry out this analysis by hand or by personal inspection, 

 which would also provide almost unlimited opportunity for error. The 

 program would have been infinitely more useful, if the stations had been 

 more numerous and of equal size, since the results could have been further 

 substantiated by abundance of individuals, as well as by mere presence 

 or absence. 



Of importance to the paleontologist is the fact that a similar paleo- 

 ecological program could be carried out in older sediments from nearby 

 localities if the fossil sampling is detailed enough. For instance, in areas 

 such as the Pliocene or Miocene of Panama, Costa Rica, Columbia and 

 Ecuador, where many of the same species or ancestors of the same Gulf 

 species occur in large numbers and in varying environments, a similar 

 matrix of common occurrences could be constructed, giving certain units 

 of each formation uniform characteristics based on a common set of 

 species. These sets of species could then be compared to those assemblages 

 given here, with the hope of identifying similar environments of deposition. 

 It is also possible to submit data from the previously mentioned Gulf of 

 Mexico studies to a similar analysis, in order to substantiate the more or 

 less subjective analyses performed before. A wealth of paleontological 

 information exists from borings and outcrops of Miocene to Pleistocene age 

 along the Gulf of Mexico coast, which could be compared by computor 

 techniques to those results obtained from the sampling of the Recent. 



Besides the computor analysis of these data, several other methods were 

 used to establish the various assemblages in the Gulf of California. About 

 350 areal distribution maps of common species were drafted and com- 



