SECRETARY'S REPORT 81 



Initial flooding of the reservoir made it necessary to visit several 

 localities by boat. About 100 specimens of small mammals, rabbits, 

 rodents, and marsupials were obtained. Of special interest is a very 

 small rabbit, details of the teeth of which suggest that it may be 

 ancestral to the cony or pika, the tiny rock rabbit which lives high 

 in the mountains. If such should prove to be true these are the 

 earliest known specimens of that group of rabbits found anywhere 

 in the world. The Canyon Ferry Reservoir basin, which will not be 

 available for study another season because of the impounded water, 

 has been the most productive, both in the number and variety of 

 species, of any locality in the area and is the only one thus far that has 

 produced a sizable Middle Oligocene fauna in the Intermountain 

 Basins. On June 27 the party moved to the Fort Peck Reservoir in 

 Montana for the purpose of examining a plesiosaur (marine reptile) 

 skeleton found in the Upper Cretaceous Bear Paw shale by a member 

 of the Fish and Wildlife Service. At the end of the year the party 

 was at Fort Peck. 



During the year 18 preliminary appraisal reports were completed, 

 mimeographed, and distributed to the cooperating agencies. One 

 supplemental report, on the Fort Randall Reservoir, was completed 

 and ready to mimeograph. Fourteen short articles on specific sub- 

 jects in Plains archeology were completed and printed in various 

 publications. Six appeared in the Plains Archeological Conference 

 News Letter; four in the Proceedings of the Nebraska Academy of 

 Sciences, 63d annual meeting; one in American Antiquity; one in the 

 Americana Annual ; and two in the Missouri Basin Progress Report, 

 issued monthly by the Interior Missouri Basin Field Committee. 

 Thirteen additional articles were completed and liad been accepted 

 for publication by various journals. Nine reports were completed 

 and were ready to submit for publication. They included three tech- 

 nical papers on excavations in the Garrison Reservoir area, one on an 

 excavated site in the Oahe area, one on historic sites dug in the Fort 

 Randall basin, one on excavations in the Kirwin Reservoir, one gen- 

 eral paper on the subject of articles of white manufacture as exempli- 

 fied by the materials from various sites in the Missouri Basin, and two 

 on work in the Northwest done by a member of the staff prior to his 

 joining the Missouri Basin Project. 



The laboratory at Lincoln processed 161,036 specimens from 339 

 sites in 9 reservoir areas and 1 unassignable site. A total of 22,570 

 catalog numbers was assigned to the series of specimens. The work 

 in the laboratory also included : Reflex copies of record sheets, both 

 negatives and prints, 12,629; photographic negatives, 2,281; photo- 

 graphic contact prints, 11,474; enlargements, 5" x 7" to 20" x 24", 

 4,082 ; photographs mounted for files, 6,374 ; transparencies mounted in 

 glass, 1,132 ; drawings, tracings, and maps, 126 ; specimens drawn for 



