SANTO DOMINGAN PALEONTOLOGICAL 
EXPLORATIONS 
CARLOTTA J. MAURY 
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 
In the early seventies, forty-four years ago, Professor William 
Gabb published the results of his topographical and paleontological 
explorations in Santo Domingo." 
Since that time no paleontological researches have been made 
on the island until the writer’s expedition up the Yaqui Valley in 
1916. Fully illustrated and detailed accounts of the latter have 
been published in Bulletins of American Paleontology;? but a 
comparative and historical sketch of the subject and a statement 
of the present status of our knowledge may perhaps be deemed of 
interest. 
Before the time of Gabb, in 1849 and 1850, paleontological 
collections had been made by Colonel Heneken, of the British 
army. This gentleman, who was the pioneer, was stationed for a 
time at the fort at Monte Cristi, and his interest was awakened by 
finding the exquisitely preserved fossil shells at various places up 
the valley of the Rio Yaqui and its southern tributaries. In the — 
interval between revolutions and military duties he obtained two 
collections of fossils which he sent with explanatory notes to the 
Geological Society of London. For many years the fossils were 
kept in the rooms of that Society; but lately they have been 
handed over to the natural-history division of the British Museum. 
The shells Heneken collected were described by Sowerby, and 
interesting deductions on their relationships and affinities were 
written by Moore. Both Moore and Sowerby were quick to see 
their resemblance to the fossils of Dax in the Bordelais region of 
t William Gabb, Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., XV (1873). 
2“Santo Domingo Type Sections and Fossils,’’? Ball. Amer. Pal., V, No. 29 
(March-April, 1917), 251 pp., 39 pls.; No. 30 (May, 1917), 45 pp., 3 pls. 
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