SECRETARY'S REPORT 51 



along the valley of Stranger Creek but found no fossils. A Greenbriar 

 quarry at Terra Alta, W. Va., also yielded no results, but one at Fair- 

 chance, Pa., yielded scraps of fossil fishes. 



On September 6, Dr. Hotton, Mr. Kitching, and Gerald R. Paulson, 

 museum technician, went to Chalk Point, in nearby Maryland, to col- 

 lect the skeleton of a whale discovered during excavation for a facility 

 of the Potomac Electric Power Co. The deposits at Chalk Point are 

 assigned to the Calvert formation, of late Miocene age. The specimen 

 turned out to be a squalodont whale that was about 15 feet long during 

 life ; the amomit of wear shown by the teeth indicates that the indi- 

 vidual was very old when it died. As recovered, the specimen consists 

 of a large part of the lower jaw, a number of vertebrae, ribs, loose 

 teeth, a scapula, and a complete flipper in good articulation. The find 

 is significant as a locality record, and anatomically because of the 

 excellent preservation of the flipper. The degree of wear on the teeth 

 is interesting from the viewpoint of function. 



Dr. Hotton and Mr. Kitcliing conducted October fieldwork in sev- 

 eral western States and in a variety of formations ranging in age from 

 Permian to Oligocene. These include the Wliite River Oligocene and 

 Pierre Cretaceous of South Dakota and Wyoming; the Permian, 

 Triassic, and Paleocene of New Mexico ; and the Permian and Trias- 

 sic of Texas. The most spectacular result of the trip was the dis- 

 covery of an untouched pocket of vertebrates in the lower Permian 

 along West Coffee Creek, Baylor County, Tex., which yielded four 

 complete skeletons and five additional skulls of various amphibians 

 and reptiles, plus a considerable amount of material of an as yet 

 undetermined nature. These specimens represent a good portion of 

 the fauna of the lower Permian of the United States. Most of them 

 have been forwarded to the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontolog- 

 ical Research, in Johannesburg, South Africa, in partial reciprocity 

 for the excellent Beaufort material from South Africa that Mr. 

 Kitching's help and the good offices of the institute enabled Dr. Hot- 

 ton to collect. 



Howard I. Chapelle, curator of transportation in the Museum of 

 History and Teclmology, made brief trips to Madrid and Barcelona, 

 Spain, during December and May to examine the construction of a full- 

 size replica of Columbus's flagsliip Santa Maria and to check the prog- 

 ress of a scale model to be donated to the Smithsonian. The research 

 for this project of reconstruction has been carried on by Captain de 

 Corbita J. M. Marinez-Hidalgo, S.N., director of the Maritime Mu- 

 seum in Barcelona, who previously had done similar research on a 

 Spanish galley of the post-Lepanto period and for a caravel, specifical- 

 ly the Pinta. The Maritime Museum is located in an ancient galley 

 yard built before the battle of Lepanto (1571). The original stone 



