SECRETARY'S REPORT 49 



From the beginning of September to mid-October associate curator 

 of vertebrate paleontology D. 11. Dmikle, accompanied by museum 

 technician G. B. Sullivan, conducted field work in northwestern 

 Ohio, in the area around Council Bluffs, Iowa, and in the Manzano 

 Mountains of central New Mexico. The 370 specimens collected and 

 the stratigraphic observations made will permit important additions 

 and revisions of the known paleoichthyological faunas of the Middle 

 Devonian silica shale of Ohio and several Late Paleozoic horizons 

 of the midcontinent and Kocky Mountain regions. The New Mexico 

 occurrence investigated is of especial interest ; it is practically the one 

 known source in North America of a varied marine assemblage of 

 well-preserved fishes, invertebrates, and plants of the Permo-Carbon- 

 if erous interval. 



In September associate curator of vertebrate paleontology Nicholas 

 Hotton III left Washington for field work in Africa. In addition to 

 collecting in the Permo-Triassic beds of the Karroo region of South 

 Africa, which has yielded a variety of mammal-like reptiles, he carried 

 on during a greater part of the year a detailed stratigraphic study of 

 the Beaufort series with a view toward a better understanding of the 

 distribution and ecology of the forms. At the end of the year he had 

 left Africa for Europe to study at certain of the leading museums. 



On December 18, 1963, Dr. Clayton E. Ray joined the staff as asso- 

 ciate curator of vertebrate paleontology. During the next few 

 months, in continuation of his studies of fossil and modern terrestrial 

 vertebrates, especially rodents, of the Antillean region, he completed 

 reports on a new species of capromyid rodent and an undescribed 

 miniature ground sloth, both from a cave in the Dominican Republic. 

 From mid-May to the latter part of June he conducted a field investi- 

 gation of Pleistocene occurrences in the vicinity of Puebla, Mexico, in 

 collaboration with an archeological party from the Peabody Museum 

 in Cambridge, Mass. 



On three occasions during the year Dr. Remington Kellogg, honor- 

 ary research associate, made day-long trips to the Chesapeake Bay 

 area, in company with one or more members of the staff, to inspect ex- 

 posed remains of Miocene vertebrates. The trip in July to Parker 

 Creek, Calvert County, Md., yielded a good part of the skeleton of a 

 Miocene cetothere {Mesocitus cephunculus) which is especially use- 

 ful to Dr. Kellogg in connection with studies now in progress on this 

 group of extinct whalebone whales. The trip to King George, Va., in 

 May revealed a shoreline concentration of mixed and abraded por- 

 poise and sea-cow bones and a variety of shark teeth. Inland occur- 

 rences such as this are only rarely encountered, and the distribution 

 record is of interest. In the course of the year Dr. Kellogg completed 

 a report on the skeleton of one of the larger Calvert Miocene whale- 

 bone whales. 



