REVISION OF PALEOZOIC STELLEROIDEA WITH 

 SPECIAL REFERENCE TO NORTH AMERICAN 

 ASTEROIDEA 



By Charles Schuchert 



Professor of Paleontology, Yale University, New Haven. 



PREFACE 



This memoir had its inception in 1896, and came about through 

 the force of circumstances. The writer, at that tune assistant curator 

 in the United States National Museum, was made aware of the desire 

 of Mr. I. H. Harris, of Waynesville, Oliio, to present to that institu- 

 tion his extensive collection of Ordovicic fossils. He had long known 

 Mr. Harris, having met him as a young man, about the year 1876, 

 at which time the Harris collection was already widely known, not 

 only for its quantity, but more especiallj^ for its many choice speci- 

 mens of the rarer species of starfishes, crinids, and trilobites. Twenty 

 years later came Mr. Harris's desire to present to the National 

 Museum the collection upon which he had been at work for fifty 

 years. This gift brought to the National Museum not less than 40 

 asterids, 35 (31 on one slab) ophiurids from the Cincinnatic strata 

 (the great majority from the Waynesville formation), besides an 

 asterid and 12 specimens of Ony chaster Jlexilis from the Keokuk 

 formation at Craw^ords\T.lle, Indiana. Some years later the National 

 Museum acquired the very valuable E. O. Ulrich collection, in which 

 there were also many good starfishes. Accordingly, it is safe to state 

 that in no other museum are there so many Ordovicic asterids, in so 

 great a variety and in such excellent preservation. 



The material of the Harris collection seemed to show that its com- 

 plete study would not only reveal much new knowledge, but give an 

 insight as weU into the probable evolution of the Paleozoic starfishes. 

 "VMien these facts were made known to the then director of the National 

 Museum, Dr. G. Brown Goode, he asked the writer to invite Mr. Harris 

 to join him in a work on the Ordovicic starfishes. This was done and 

 Mr. Harris was greatly pleased to undertake the joint authorship. 

 He did all he could to further the work, but it went very slowly, 

 because the present writer was so much occupied with curatorial 

 work as well as the arranging of museum exhibits for the expositions 

 in which the United States Government participated and which came 



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