32 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



be inspected at regular intervals to save the bones that are exposed 

 by the elements. Weather permitting, trips of one to two days are 

 arranged for and these visits are extended if promising material is 

 located. The last visit for the present season covered the period July 

 19 to July 22, 1928. On these inspection trips many interesting speci- 

 mens have been found and brought to the museum. 



Included among the fossil material thus acquired are the whole or 

 portions of skeletons of at least 22 different kinds of whales referable 

 to six families. This assemblage includes shark-toothed porpoises, 

 sperm whales, both long and short-beaked porpoises, river dolphins, 

 and several kinds of archaic whalebone whales or cetotheres as they 

 are generally called. Remains of a small seal and a sea cow or sirenian 

 have been found here. 



One of the characteristic porpoises found in this formation of sandy 

 clay has a skull with a long beak. Curiously enough, sockets for 

 teeth are absent near the tip. Three specimens of another much longer- 

 snouted porpoise with a skull nearly four feet in length have been 

 found. Several other types of long narrow-beaked porpoises also 

 frequented the Miocene seas that covered this area. The jaws of one 

 of these are remarkably flattened. Another type has many long slender 

 curved teeth. Judging from the known remains, sperm whales rarely 

 visited this area and the predatory shark-toothed porpoises were less 

 numerous than the sup])osedly fish-eating types. Several kinds of 

 short-snouted porpoises have been found, and for two of these types 

 almost complete skeletons have been collected. Most of the archaic 

 whalebone whales are somewhat smaller than the smallest of the living 

 finner whales, but the jaws of at least one type are as large as those 

 of the recent Sei whale. 



