AMERICAN MUSEUM EXPEDITIONS FOR 

 FOSSIL VERTEBRATES 



By W. D. Matthew 



THE American Museum expedition to Alberta in charge of Mr. Barnum 

 Brown in search of Cretaceous dinosaurs, reports a very successful 

 season. Nine dinosaur skulls and a correspondingly large series 

 of skeletons or parts of skeletons have been secured. These all come from 

 an older formation than those in which most of our Cretaceous dinosaurs 

 have been obtained. Many, perhaps most of them, will be new to science, 

 and we hope to recognize among them the ancestors of the horned dinosaur 

 Triceratops, the armored Ankylosaurus, the duck-billed Trachodon and the 

 carnivorous Tyrannosaurus which lived during the latest Cretaceous. 

 Doubtless also we shall find among them others which left no descendants in 

 the later fauna. The collection of over seventy boxes will soon be shipped 

 to the Museum, and its preparation and study will be taken up during the 

 winter. Mr. Brown regards this as the most successful season's work yet 

 in his dinosaur campaign, bettering even last year's results. 



Mr. Walter Granger, in charge of the American Museum expedition to 

 the Eocene of New Mexico, has secured a fine collection of the very rare 

 fossils from the Puerco formation of that region. 



One of the most valuable portions of the Cope collection of fossil mam- 

 mals purchased for the Museum by a number of the Trustees in 1894, was 

 the collection from the Puerco formation. These were, and are, the most 

 ancient mammals that we know much about; for the few remains of mam- 

 mals that have been found in older formations are very fragmentary and 

 exceedingly rare. With the Puerco fauna at the very beginning of the Age 

 of Mammals commence the consecutive documentary records of the history 

 of the evolution of the various kinds of higher quadrupeds. It is to palaeon- 

 tology what the Chaldrean records are to archaeology. 



Additions to the Cope collection of Puerco fossils were secured by the 

 Museum expeditions of 1892 and 1896. Mr. Granger has now secured from 

 the Lower or True Puerco horizon a collection equaling or exceeding in 

 value all that the Museum possessed hitherto, and in addition a large series 

 of specimens from the Torrejon or Upper Puerco horizon. Among the new 

 specimens are a number of skulls and two or more skeletons. One specimen 

 of Edoconus, a primitive hoofed animal about as large as a bull terrier, from 

 the Lower Puerco is fairly complete and is the most ancient mammal skele- 

 ton ever found. Other skulls and partial skeletons of primitive hoofed and 

 clawed mammals are of scarcely less interest, and a number of specimens 

 appear to belong to new genera and species. Altogether the collection is of 

 remarkable scientific interest, and will provide material for a careful restudy 

 of the Basal Eocene faunre. 



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