506 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



nothing has been known about the geological 

 history of the alligator. One of the Ameri- 

 can Museum expeditions of 1916 found re- 

 mains of a true alligator in the later Tertiary 

 of Nebraska, and a fine specimen here figured 

 from the middle Tertiary of the Big Bad 

 Lands of South Dakota also proves to belong 

 to this genus; although in some respects it is 

 intermediate between modern crocodiles and 

 alligators. It thus appears that there were 

 true alligators in North America as early as 

 the beginning of the Oligocene epoch. Many 

 skulls of crocodilians from the older Ter- 

 tiaries of this country have been found, but 

 so far as known there were no alligators 

 among them; most of them were true croco- 

 diles but there were at least two peculiar ex- 

 tinct genera. 



It seems probable, therefore, that the alli- 

 gator invaded this country at the beginning 

 of the Oligocene or middle Tertiary along 



with the numerous kinds of mammalian 

 quadrupeds that suddenly appeared at that 

 time. Where they came from is not so cer- 

 tain ; perhaps from the northern parts of 

 North America, but probably ultimately from 

 some part of central or northern Asia. The 

 earlier ancestry of the alligator is one of the 

 many problems for the solution of which we 

 may look to explorations in China and Cen- 

 tral Asia after the war has come to an end. 

 The specimen here figured was collected by 

 Mr. IT. F. Wells in the Big Bad Lands some 

 years ago, but has not until now been ex- 

 tracted from the matrix. It is an unusually 

 perfect skeleton, although lacking the tail, 

 and is probably the same species as the 

 "Crocodilus" prenasalis described by Dr. 

 Loomis 1 in 1904, from a part of the muzzle 

 and other fragments. — W. D. M. 



1 Two New Reptiles from the Titanothere Beds, 

 by P. B. Loomis, Anirrican Journal of Science, 4th 

 series. Vol. XVIII, Dec, 1904, pp. 427-432. 



Charles Rochester Eastman (1868-1918) 



DR. EASTMAN was associated with 

 the American Museum since 1915, 

 and under his learned editorship there 

 appeared from the Museum press two volumes 

 dealing with the literature of fishes which 

 included the collation and revision of about 

 fifty thousand titles, — a labor the patient 

 magnitude of which cannot be measured 

 readily. For the accomplishment of this 

 task Dr. Eastman brought into play an ex- 

 traordinary range of attainments: he had 

 had the training of Harvard, had studied at 

 Johns Hopkins, and had taken the degree 

 of doctor in philosophy at Munich; he was 

 a gifted linguist (our references deal with 

 about eighteen languages) ; he was an ac- 

 complished ichthyologist, familiar with the 

 literature of the fishes through years of re- 

 search; and, possibly best of all for our 

 purpose, he was a devoted bibliophile, which 

 enabled him patiently to consider the ways 

 and means of obtaining out-of-the-way ref- 

 erences to make our series complete. In 

 fact, in this regard, he had for our particu- 

 lar subject the zest of the amateur who 

 captures a rare specimen, or of a collector 

 of paintings who discovers under conceal- 

 ing varnish the name of an earlv master. 



For this labor, then, the thanks of students 

 of fishes will ever be given to Dr. Eastman. 

 As an ichthyologist, Dr. Eastman had de- 

 voted himself since 189.3 to the study of the 

 older groups; and to our knowledge of fossil 

 fishes from all horizons, he contributed about 

 one hundred papers. His first publication 

 dealt with certain sharks of chalk times. 

 This led him to trace back the earliest 

 sharks, especially those of the Devonian 

 age, and these in turn introduced to 

 his critical eye a grouj) of contemporary 

 fishes known as "placoderms," whose forms 

 and relationships have ever been puzzles to 

 students. By some they have been recorded 

 as masquerading sharks, by others as highly 

 modified lung fishes, by still others as curi- 

 ous offshoots of a race of fishes older and 

 more primitive even than sharks. Dr. East- 

 man studied the remains of these early 

 jjlacoderms with the greatest zeal and skill. 

 He examined collections from all parts of 

 the world; he described new forms and he 

 traced their kinships, root and branch. His 

 keen eye associated the tattered bits of these 

 earliest creatures and presented them to us 

 almost as living fishes. His skill in this 

 interpretation was almost uncanny, and stu- 



