NO. 3 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I915 3I 



fauna, exceedingly like that which marks the horizon of the Onon- 

 daga limestone throughout the extent of this well known and widely 

 distributed Middle Devonian formation, had already invaded 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. R. D. Mesler, under the supervision of Dr. Ulrich, spent the 

 summer of 19 15 in making collections of Ordovician and Silurian 

 fossils from formations and localities in the Appalachian and Miss- 

 issippi 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 Ten- 

 nessee, which will form the basis of a future monograph on the 

 paleontology of that region. 



EXPLORATIONS IN SIBERIA 



Through the liberality of a friend the Museum was enabled to 

 send Mr. B. Alexander with the Koren Expedition to the Kolyma 

 River region of northern Siberia. The expedition left Seattle. Wash- 

 ington, about June i, 1914, and returned a year from the following- 

 September. 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 quantity of material was obtained, though no com- 

 plete skeleton. 



The following report, with photographs taken by his party, was 

 submitted by Mr. Alexander at the conclusion of his field-work : 



In May, 1914, the Smithsonian Institution appointed me as a collector, with 

 instructions " to obtain geological, mineralogical, and paleontological speci- 

 mens " for the Institution, and particularly " to secure remains of the Siberian 

 mammoth " in the Kolyma Valley, northeastern Siberia. For this purpose I 

 was attached to a trading company which left Seattle in a small power 

 schooner June 24, 1914, arriving at Nizhni Kolymsk on August 26. 



Nizhni Kolymsk is the oldest and outermost permanent Russian settlement 

 in the Yakutsk government, northeastern Siberia. The village now consists of 

 about 26 inhabited log houses and one Russian orthodox church, and is located 

 near the 69th degree of northern latitude, a short distance above the mouth 

 of the Kolyma and just inside the Arctic tree limit. 



