8 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



numerous collections of fossils were secured for the museum series, 

 and incidentally the investigations resulted in the proper placement 

 of many fossils whose stratigraphic position had hitherto been un- 

 certain. 



In the latter part of the season Dr. Ulrich worked out the held 

 relations of some insufficiently located collections of Paleozoic fossils 

 made in southwest Virginia at various times in the past. The most 

 important result of these investigations is the proof that a large 

 coral fauna, exceedingly like that which marks the horizon of the 

 Onondaga limestone throughout the extent of this well known and 

 widely distributed Middle Devonian formation, had already in- 

 vaded the continental basins as far as southwest Virginia during the 

 closing stages of the preceding Lower Devonian. This instance of 

 recurring fossil faunas is regarded as one of the most important of 

 the many similar instances that have been established through the 

 field studies of Dr. Ulrich during the past 25 years. All have served 

 in correcting erroneous correlations of formations that had arisen 

 through the confusion of earlier or later appearances of faunas with 

 the one recognized in the standardized sequence of stratigraphic 



units. 



Mr. E. D. Mesler, under the supervision of Dr. Ulrich, spent the 

 summer of 1915 in making collections of Ordovician and Silurian 

 fossils from formations and localities in the Appalachian and Missis- 

 sippi Valleys which had hitherto been little represented in the 

 museum collections. A large number of fossils resulted from his 

 trip, particularly from the Middle Ordovician rocks of east Tennes- 

 see, which will form the basis of a future monograph on the paleon- 

 tology of that region. 



EXPLORATIONS IN SIBERIA. 



Through the liberality of the Telluride Association the Institution 

 was enabled to send Mr. B. Alexander with the Koren Expedition 

 to the Kolyma River region of northern Siberia. The expedition left 

 Seattle, Wash., in June, 1914, and returned in September, 1915. The 

 immediate purpose of the trip was to obtain remains of large extinct 

 animals, particularly of the mammoth for which the region is noted. 

 The results were not all that were hoped for, but a considerable quan- 

 tity of material was obtained, though no complete skeleton. A re- 

 port, with photographs taken by the party, was published in the 

 pamphlet on Smithsonian explorations and field work in 1915. The 

 collection of bones sent in by the expedition contains a few fine speci- 

 mens, together with a considerable number of isolated bones, which 

 are valuable for study and comparison. They all indicate a late 

 Pleistocene nge, as the bones of many of the forms represented can 

 with difficulty be distinguished from those of species still living in 



