Order Acipenseroidei' 



VADIM D. VLADYKOV2 



and 

 JOHN R. GREELEY3 



Acknowledgments. We are indebted to the late Leon Bertin and to Miss Rolande 

 Esteve for their help and for their permission to examine DumeriTs types of Sturgeons 

 in the Paris Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle. We are also grateful to Henry 

 W. Fowler and Leonard P. Schultz for making available for study the Sturgeon 

 collections in the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia and of the United 

 States National Museum; to Loren P. Woods for specimens from the Chicago 

 Natural History Museum; to Carl E. Guthe and Ralph S. Palmer for their kind 

 offer of a rich collection of Acipenser brevirostris from the New York State 

 Museum ; to the late Alexander D. Bajkov, R. E. Dimick, Ivan f. Donaldson, and 

 Charles E. Warren for collecting Sturgeons in Oregon; and to Henry B. Bigelow 

 and William C. Schroeder for their careful editing of this manuscript and for making 

 available their unpublished notes. 



The illustrations were drawn by Paul I. Voevodine, artist of the Department 

 of Fisheries, Quebec. 



Scope of Study. In the following text we give the characters of the Order Aci- 

 penseroidei and of the family Acipenseridae; also descriptions, life histories, and geo- 

 graphical distributions, as well as synonyms and references, for the following Stur- 

 geons: Acipenser brevirostris, A. fulvescens, A. oxyrhynchus oxyrhynchus, and A. oxyrhynchus 



1. Contribution No. 53, Department of Fisheries, Quebec, P. Q., Canada. 



2. Present address: Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 



3. Present adress: Division of Fish and Game, Conservation Department, Albany, New York, U.S.A. 



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