JIN 1 1903 



Reports on the Scientific Results of the Expedition to the Tropical 

 Pacific in charge: of Alexander Agassiz by the U. S. Fish Commission 

 Steamer " Albatross," from August, 1899, to March, 1900, Commander 

 Jefferson F. Moser, U. S. N., commanding. 



SHARKS' TEETH AND CETACEAN BONES FROM THE RED 

 CLAY OF THE TROPICAL PACIFIC. 



By C. R. EASTMAN. 



(Published by permission of Geo. M. Bowers, U. S. Commissioner of Fish ami Fisheries.) 



When, more than sixty years ago, Edward Forbes sought to explain the 

 so-called " Northern outliers " (or assemblages of marine animals inhabiting 

 certain depressed areas of the sea-bottom in the vicinity of the British 

 Islands, and differing from those found over adjacent and shallower regions) 

 as remnants of a preglacial Arctic fauna, an ingenious suggestion was put 

 forward, which subsequently received a wide application, and has indeed 

 been carried to unwarranted extremes in some cases. 



For instance, while there can be no question that Sir Charles Lyell was 

 wrong in declaring that " to talk of chalk having been uninterruptedly 

 formed in the Atlantic is as inadmissible from a geographical as a geological 

 sense," and that Professor L. Agassiz's conclusion 1 is abundantly confirmed 

 that " the present continental areas within the 200-fathoin line, as well 

 as the oceans, have preserved their outlines and positions from the earliest 

 times," nevertheless the generalizations once so popular, that " we are still 

 living in the Cretaceous epoch," or that "Cretaceous outliers" are repre- 

 sented by the archaic types still existing at great depths, are now accepted 

 only in a very much modified sense. 



Amongst the forms brought to light by dredging at great depths in mid- 

 ocean which have interesting pakeontological relations are semi-fossil sharks' 



1 Bull. Mus. Comp. Zoul., Vol. I. (1S60), pp. 368, 369. 



