284 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



National Museum, 35 and considerable well-preserved material secured 

 from the Pleistocene of Cuba and Porto Rico, with fragmentary data 

 on the Pleistocene fauna of Hispaniola and Jamaica. The especial 

 interest of these insular faunas lies in their source and paleogeo- 

 graphic bearings. South America affords an immense field for ex- 

 ploration, but since the death of Florentino Ameghino there is but 

 little progress to record. The explorations begun by the Field 

 Museum will, it is hoped, initiate a new period of advance in our 

 knowledge of the paleontologic history of this continent. 



In Africa considerable reconnaissance work has been done at 

 various points, but beyond the Tendaguru and Karroo discoveries 

 already noted, the only finds which can be noted here are the Cre- 

 taceous dinosaurs discovered by Stromer in the Libyan desert. 36 

 These are of quite a remarkable type — Sauropods and a peculiar car- 

 nivorous genus — the fauna possibly having descended from the 

 Wealden fauna; but careful comparative study is still needed. 



In India Doctor Matley has obtained an interesting Cretaceous 

 dinosaur fauna from the Deccan, but only preliminary notices of it 

 have as yet been published. 37 The chief advance in Indian paleon- 

 tology is the admirable stratigraphic and faunal work of Pilgrim 

 in sorting out and correlating the heterogeneous group of faunas 

 hitherto known as the Siwalik fauna. 38 The splendid collections of 

 these faunas recently secured by Barnum Brown for the American 

 Museum deserve special mention, as also the discovery of Oligocene 

 and Eocene faunas in Baluchistan and Burma by Cooper, Pilgrim, 

 and Cotter. The gigantic " Baluchitherium" of which parts of the 

 skeleton were discovered by Cooper, 39 is perhaps the largest known 

 land mammal. Borissiak has reported what seems to be the same 

 animal in Russia, under the name of Indricotherium, i0 and last sum- 

 mer the American Museum secured a complete skull, nearly five 

 feet in length, in Mongolia. 41 



The results of the American Museum explorations in Mongolia are 

 probably the most important discovery of the last decade. Central 



86 W. D. Matthew (1919) : Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, vol. xviii, pp. 161-i81. 



H. E. Anthony (1918) : Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., n. s., vol. ii, pp. 331-435, pis. 

 lv-lxxiv. 



G. S. Miller (1916) : Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 66,. no. 12; 1922, idem, vol. 74, no. 3. 



30 E. Stromer (1914, 1917) : Wirbelthier-Reste der Baharije-Stufe. Abh. Kgl. Bay. Akad. 

 Wiss., xxvii, 3" Abh. ; xxviii, 3 e u. 8 e Abh. 



37 C. A. Matley (1922): Personal communications. B. Brown (1920-1923.) Ab lit. 



38 G. E. Pilgrim (1912) : Vert. Fauna of the Gaj Series. Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. 

 iv, no. 2, pp. 1-84, pis. i-xxx ; 1913, Correlation of the Siwaliks with Mammal Horizons 

 of Europe. Rec. Geol. Survey. India, vol. xliii, pp. 264-326, pis. xxvi-xxviii. 



89 C. Forster Cooper (1911) : Paraceratherium bugtieme, a new genus of Rhinocerotidae. 

 Amer. Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. viii, pp. 711-716, pi. x ; 1913, Thaumastotherium [corr. to 

 BalucMtherium] osiorni, a new genus of Perissodactyles. Ibid., vol. xii, pp. 376-381. 



40 A. Borissiak (1915) : Rhinoceros de la Taille d'un Mammoth. (Indricotlwrium, new 

 genus.) Geological Messenger, vol. 1, pp. 131-134 (Russian text only). 



" H. F. Osborn (1923) : Amer. Mus. Novitates, no. — . (In press.) 



