president's address. 855 



paper, because if the views as to the age of the beds and the 

 atiinities of the remains are corroljorated, Patagonia must have 

 l)een a centre of distribution of mammals not only for the Antarctic 

 regions of the time, but also for Europe and, perhaps. North 

 America. 



Mr. F. Ameghino shows that beds exist — red sandstones — 

 containing remains of Dinosaurs and undoubtedly of Upper 

 Cretaceous Age. Above those and quite continuous with them 

 comes the Pyrotherium Formation, containing armoured and 

 unarmoured Edentates, peculiar Carnivora, Plagiaulacidae, Hystri- 

 comorphous Rodentia, peculiar Ungulates and primitive forms of 

 Primates. Axneghino includes Pyrotherium among the Ungulates, 

 and considers it allied to the Proboscidea, but Woodward asks in 

 a note at the end whether it may not be allied rather to Diyroto- 

 doii. Ameghino says that if these beds are not Cretaceous, then 

 Dinosaurs lived in Patagonia until a more recent epoch than in 

 other portions of the globe. 



Above the Pyrotherium Formation comes the Patagonian 

 Formation, which has been erroneously confounded with the* 

 marine formations of Parana. The mollusca of the Patagonian 

 Formation have been stated by D'Orbigny, Sowerby, Philippi, 

 Hupe, Remond de Corbineau and Steinman to be partly of Eocene 

 and partly of Upper Cretaceous Age. The objection to this 

 antiquity is the presence of remains of Cetacea, which only 

 appear in Europe during the Miocene, but F. Ameghino thinks 

 the group might well have originated earlier in the southern 

 hemisphere, and snj^s their remains are more primitive in type, as 

 has been recognised by Lydekker. 



Next above comes the Santa Cruz Formation, which was at 

 one time supposed to be anterior to the Patagonian, on account 

 of the latter ha^-ing been confused with the Parana. There are 

 here numerous remains of extinct mammals, gigantic birds and 

 reptiles. There are riiai'supials of the Diprotodont groujD, which 

 like the living Cfoioles/es al>ove referi'ed to, and unlike the 

 Kangaroos, are not syndactylous. These are stated to resemble 



