SECRETARY'S REPORT 37 



In August, Dr. Erie G. Kauffman, associate curator of invertebrate 

 paleontology and paleobotany, joined a paleontological expedition 

 sponsored and financed by the University of Michigan. The objective 

 was to obtain vertebrate and invertebrate fossil remains and detailed 

 stratigraphic data from the Upper Cretaceous and the Lower Tertiary 

 coal-bearing formations of the Alaskan interior. Fossils other than 

 those of plants had not previously been recorded from these beds. 

 Beginning work in the vicinity of Healy, Alaska, the group examined 

 in detail every major outcrop of the Tertiary coal-bearing formation 

 and some of the Upper Cretaceous deposits, including the type sections 

 in the Healy-McKinley area. Numerous well-preserved plant fossils 

 were obtained but no animal remains were discovered. A representa- 

 tive flora was returned to the Smithsonian. Cross-bedding studies 

 of the coal-bearing formation were made at many localities, and 

 these studies enabled the group to define more clearly the position 

 and size of the Tertiary coal basins and the direction of transport and 

 source area for the Tertiary Clastic sediments. A final week was 

 spent on the Kenai Peninsula in the vicinity of Homer, Alaska, where 

 beds of the Kenai formation, also a Tertiary coal-bearing deposit, are 

 well exposed in the sea cliffs. Again a search for animal life proved 

 fruitless, although abundant plant fossils were encountered and col- 

 lected. A great deal of new information concerning the stratigraphy 

 and sedimentology of the Alaskan coal-bearing deposits was gathered, 

 although the principal goal of the expedition, the discovery of fossil 

 animals in these deposits, was not achieved. During a brief trip in 

 July to Brightseat, Md., Dr. Kauffman was accompanied by museum 

 aide Henry B. Roberts. The purpose of this expedition was to study 

 the fauna and stratigraphy of the Upper Cretaceous Monmouth for- 

 mation and the Brightseat formation and to note the nature of their 

 contact at the type section. More than 3,000 invertebrate specimens 

 were collected, including several species previously unknown from 

 the Maryland Cretaceous and perhaps a few species new to science. 



Dr. C. Lewis Gazin, curator of vertebrate paleontology, carried on 

 extended research in Europe. In addition to studying historic fossil 

 collections in many European museums and attending the Interna- 

 tional Geological Congress at Copenhagen and various paleontological 

 symposia, Dr. Gazin also visited various collecting localities and ob- 

 tained important material for the national collections. In France he 

 visited the various collecting sites for Paleocene mammals in the 

 Cernay area and all the known quarries where Sparnacian or Lower 

 Eocene mammals have been found. He also worked at the Cormeilles 

 Quarry near Paris, where a remarkable display of Early Tertiary 

 horizons from the Ludian or Gypse de Paris through the Sannoisian 

 to the Stampian could be seen. This is very near Sannois, the type 

 locality for the Sannoisian Lower Oligocene. In Spain, in the vicinity 



