22 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



Prochnap Khiri Khan. The field party then proceeded late in March 

 to the forested area near Ban Hua Thanon in Khlong Klung Valley, 

 province of Nakhon Sawan, where fieldwork in Thailand was termi- 

 nated on May 4, 1953. 



Traveling by air from Washington, D. C, Dr. Joseph P. E. Morri- 

 son, associate curator of mollusks, arrived at Viti Levu, one of the 

 Fiji Islands, on June 11, 1952, and continued the flight on the same 

 day to Tahiti by way of the Cook Islands. Following 10 days of col- 

 lecting on Tahiti, the team for the study of coral-atoll ecology or- 

 ganized by the Pacific Science Board was transported, through the 

 courtesy of the French Government, some 450 miles by schooner to 

 Raroia Atoll, where field studies and collections were made from 

 June 26 to September 7, 1952. Members of the field party were 

 brought back to Tahiti by the same French schooner. Following 

 another week of collecting on Tahiti, Dr. Morrison proceeded by air 

 to Aitutaki in the Cook Islands and Viti Levu, the season's work being 

 completed on September 23 at that locality. 



Fieldwork by three parties engaged in search for invertebrate and 

 vertebrate fossils was financed by the income from the Walcott bequest. 

 Dr. G. A. Cooper, curator, Arthur L. Bowsher, associate curator, and 

 W. T. Allen, aide, division of invertebrate paleontology and paleo- 

 botany, commenced the season's work on July 9, 1952, at Adair, Okla., 

 where they spent 2 days collecting Mississippian fossils while en route 

 to Pine Springs Camp in the Guadalupe Mountains of western Texas. 

 Blocks of invertebrate fossils were quarried from the Permian reef 

 limestone near Guadalupe Peak. On July 18 Cooper's party pro- 

 ceeded to Silver City, N. Mex., to obtain Devonian fossils and thence 

 to other Devonian localities in the vicinity of Kingston, Mud Springs 

 Mountains, Derry, the San Andreas and Sacramento Mountains near 

 Alamogordo, and the Mimbres Mountains. Blocks of silicified upper 

 Pennsylvanian limestone were also collected in the southern part of 

 the Sacramento Mountains. On the return trip stops were made July 

 29 to August 2, at Ponca City and Tulsa, Okla., to collect Permian 

 invertebrates, and in Missouri for Mississippian fossils. 



From the middle of September until mid-December, associate cura- 

 tors Dr. A. R. Loeblich, Jr., and Dr. David H. Dunkle searched for 

 Jurassic and Cretaceous invertebrates and Mesozoic and Tertiary 

 vertebrates in eastern and southern Mexico. They made initial col- 

 lections in the extensive Cretaceous beds in Coahuila and Tamaulipas 

 and later continued the fieldwork in Puebla, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. 

 In the course of this trip, which traversed the Sierra Madre Oriental 

 from the vicinity of Monterrey to beyond the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 

 they collected Foraminifera, mollusks, and brachiopods from the 

 Mesozoic deposits and vertebrates from an Upper Cretaceous forma- 



