382 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1951 



good range of fossils was collected from them. Fish and reptilian 

 remains from Cretaceous deposits were salvaged from the core trench 

 of the dam and also from the borrow pits. The most valuable speci- 

 mens, however, came from the Republican City Terrace fill and have 

 proved to be of great assistance in terrace studies of that region. 

 Several seasons were also spent working fossil quarries in the Medi- 

 cine Creek Reservoir basin in western Nebraska. The deposits there 

 were in the Upper Ogallala of the late Pliocene. Specimens col- 

 lected consisted of the complete skull of a fossil beaver and bones 

 of insectivores, carnivores, rhinoceroses, perissodactyls, artiodactyls, 

 and rodents. Those forms reportedly represent the latest Pliocene 

 assemblage found thus far in the Great Plains region and will be 

 extremely helpful in establishing the boundary between the Pliocene 

 and Pleistocene. Parties from the Nebraska State Museum have 

 also visited reservoir sites in South Dakota and Wyoming and have 

 been watching erosion areas in those districts for possible bone beds. 

 The work of that institution has been particularly helpful to geologic 

 studies in the Missouri Basin. 



FUTURE OF THE WORK 



Mention has been made of the fact that the Inter- Agency Salvage 

 Program is shifting from mainly reconnaissance work to more ex- 

 cavation projects. The next few years should see an even greater 

 trend in that direction. However, there are still areas where pre- 

 liminary surveys will need to be made, and new reservoirs undoubt- 

 edly will be proposed from time to time and the basins involved will 

 need to be investigated for archeological and paleontological mani- 

 festations. The next few years should see a marked acceleration in 

 intensive excavation. In addition to numerous large village sites 

 in the Missouri and Columbia Basins that should be dug, similar 

 work will be required at some of the projects in California, Texas, 

 Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and a number of States 

 along the eastern seaboard. 



The next step in the program following excavation is that of the 

 publication of the results. This is perhaps the most important phase 

 because it will make available to those interested in the subject the 

 information obtained from the field researches. The third phase 

 of the program is now getting started. Some of the detailed reports 

 on work at specific sites are nearing completion and others will 

 shortly follow. They should appear in print within the next year 

 or two. Summary articles about the evidence found at some of the 

 more significant sites in the Missouri and Columbia Basins, in Cali- 

 fornia, Texas', Georgia, and Virginia, have already appeared in scien- 

 tific journals and a series of papers constituting a Bulletin of the 



