FRESH-WATER FISHES— MYERS 347 



pirate-perches. All of them are known to have been present in the 

 Nearctic Eocene and all survive in North America today save the 

 osteoglossids and primitive cyprinodonts ; the last are probably 

 represented by the existing cave fishes. The paddlefishes are recorded 

 from the English Chalk and now exist in China ; the bowfins are as old 

 as the Jurassic and are found in the Mesozoic rocks of Europe, Brazil, 

 and North America; and the garpikes occur in the Cretaceous of 

 Europe and the Lameta beds of India. All three groups are too old 

 to enter decisively into our discussion of the Tertiary fishes. The 

 suckers are found in the Eocene of Wyoming, and Hussakof (1932) 

 has reported isolated gill covers from the Eocene of Mongolia; there is 

 one specialized genus now living in China and one North American 

 species has invaded Siberia, probably recently. The ameiurid cat- 

 fishes are represented in the Green River Eocene by Rhineastes and 

 appear to be a purely North American group related to the Old World 

 bagrids.^ A supposed living Asiatic species based on a Chinese paint- 

 ing is almost certainly mythical. To the old section probably belong 

 the North American sunfishes or basses,^ and the peculiar percopsids, 

 the geological history of which is nearly or quite unknown. The bulk 

 of the North American fresh-water fish fauna of today is made up of 

 the members of the carp or minnow family. Fossil carps are unknown 

 in North America until the Miocene, at which time the family evidently 

 arrived from Eurasia to form the second or younger section of the 

 fauna. This invasion was made up entirely of the second most primi- 

 tive (Leuciscinae) of the three great subfamilies of Cyprinidae (Regan, 

 1922). Lack of clear paleontological evidence does not allow us to say 

 whether or not the Eurasian- American true perches are autochthonous 

 North Americans. Genera supposed to be perches are recorded from 

 both the American and European Eocene. If Voigt (1934) and 

 Berg (1936) are correct in associating the short-jawed middle Eocene 

 Palaeoesox with the pikes and mud minnows, the order Haplomi 

 probably originated in Asia and may have invaded America with the 

 carps. The mud minnows,*" unknown as fossils, have two genera and 

 three American species. The pikes have several North American 

 species ** and have existed in Eurasia at least from the Oligocene to the 

 present. 



9 Regan (1922). Hussakof (1932) records fin spines of Rhineastes from the Pliocene of Mongolia. If these 

 are really generically identical with the skulls from the Bridger and Green River, they indicate that the 

 ameiurids were a Holarctic group. 



• Since this paper was written, Schlaikjer (1937) has described a sunfish from an unplaced Tertiary forma- 

 tion in Alaska. His attempt to see similarities to the sunfishes in certain Asiatic fresh-water serranids is 

 scarcely convincing, and his supposed fossil sucker, of which practically no description is given, is probably a 

 carp. If Regan (1916) is correct in referring Priscacara to the sunfishes, the family has existed in North 

 America since the Eocene. 



'" For the present purpose I include in the Umbridae the peculiar relict Novumbra, recently discovered by 

 Schultz in western Washington. The Alaskan and Siberian blackfish is of little importance to our discussion. 



" I have examined a large jaw of Esox tucius or E. masquinongy from the Pleistocene of Florida (specimen 

 in U. S. National Museum). 



