DOW 
APPENDIX, 
ARTICLE I. 
NOTICE OF THE FOSSIL FISHES. 
BY PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ. 
Mosr of the fossil remains of fishes, placed in my hands by Mr. Blake for examination and 
identification, belong to the family of sharks; one belongs to that of skates, and another is 
remotely allied to the family of mackerels. No fossil sharks’ teeth having been found west of 
the Rocky mountains before, the discovery by Mr. Blake of a variety of species belonging to 
several genera of the family of sharks, constitutes one of the most interesting additions to our 
knowledge that could have been obtained from that quarter; and the importance of these fossils: 
to science is further enhanced by the peculiar relations they bear to similar fossils found in the 
Atlantie States and in Europe, and to the sharks now living along the shores of the Old and of 
the New World, 
ECHINORHINUS, Blainv. 
i Low BLAKEI, Agassiz, Pl. I, figs. 7, 8, 17.— The most interesting and important discovery, 
since the publication of the Poissons Fossiles, is that of the tooth of the genus Echinorhinus 
in the tertiary deposits of Ocoya creek, (Posé creek,) at the western base of the Sierra Nevada, 
California. The genus Echinorhinus was founded by Blainville for the Squalus Spinosus of Lin- 
neus, the only species of the genus, thus far known, which inhabits the Mediterranean, and the 
European and African coasts of the Atlantic. I figured the teeth of the same genus under the 
name of Goniodus for the same species, (see Poissons Fossiles, vol. iii, p. 94, pl. E, fig. 13,) so 
that this name must give way to the Echinorhinus of Blainville. The discovery of the fossil 
species of this genus in the Tertiaries of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada is not only 
important as carrying back this curious type of sharks to a period older than ours, but also in 
disclosing the existence upon the American continent of types in a fossil state, known in the 
Old World only among theliving. The fossil species of Echinorhinus differs from the living; 
having the main point of the tooth more prominent, and at the same time shorter; an appear- 
Ts Which arises from the less prominence of the marginal denticles. This difference may be 
distinetly seen by comparing the figures (Pl. I,) with those of the living species given in Pois- 
Sons Fossiles, Pl. E, fig. 13. 
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