1912] Miller: Pacific Coast Avian Palaeontology 89 
Plesiocarthartes europeus Gaillard, thus becomes at once the 
most ancient cathartid, and the only instanee known to the 
author of the occurrence, fossil or Recent, of the family outside 
the American continents. The species, as far as can be learned, 
is represented by a single bone, a fragmentary tarsometatarsus 
preserved in the Museum of Lyons. The specimen is, however. 
sufficient to establish beyond question the cathartine relation- 
ships of the species. Its author considers the case to be one of 
an individual’s having strageled from its normal range. In 
view of the extensive examination of most of the European 
horizons which has failed thus far to furnish evidence of its 
further occurrence there, the conclusions reached by Dr. Gail- 
lard may be considered as probably correct. 
With the progress of work at the University of California 
our knowledge of the group under discussion is considerably 
advanced. In the collections from Fossil Lake the abundant 
avian remains are almost entirely of aquatic forms, although 
there appear in the University collections, as well as in the much 
larger Cope and the Condon collections, a number of raptorial 
species. There are, however, no specimens referable to the Cath- 
artidae, a rather conspicuous absence. 
There appears no reason deducible from the habits of the 
turkey vulture of today why, if vultures were present during 
the formation of these beds, their remains should not have been 
preserved there. In fact, there is every reason for considering 
the vulture a more favorable subject for preservation in such 
deposits than are the other raptors. The turkey vulture is one 
of the commonest of beach-combers along the shores of both fresh 
and salt-water bodies and it comes habitually in great flocks to 
spend the warmer parts of the day wading in the shallower 
waters or sitting about the sand bars of quiet streams. The 
negative evidence very strongly suggests the absence of ecath- 
artids from the region during the deposition of the Fossil Lake 
beds. 
Potter Creek and Samwel caves both furnish remains of 
these vultures, while the Rancho La Brea asphalt is especially 
rich in raptorial species, about equally divided between the cath- 
artids and the faleonids. 
