106 CONTRIBUTION TO THE PALEONTOLOGY OF TRINIDAD. 



Serpula clymenioides is quite common in the Foraminiferal beds of Farallon 

 Rock, where Mr. Veatch succeeded in finding nearly a dozen shells. They were 

 associated with the curious crustacean carapace of Ranina porifera Woodward 

 and a number of sea urchins. 



Locality. — Farallon Rock (also called Johnson's Island), near San Fernando, 



Trinidad, in the Gulf of Paria. 



Geological horizon.— Lower Oligocene. Approximately equivalent to the San 

 Fernando beds of Trinidad, and probably to the Vicksburgian of Mississippi. 



Class CRUSTACEA. 



Genus RANINA. 



a 



Ranina porifera Woodward. Plate XIII, Figure 23. 



Ranina porifera Woodward, Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, XXII, pp. 591-592, pi. XXVI, 



fig. 18, 1866. 

 Ranina porifera Guppy, Geol. Mag., p. 443, 1874. 



Woodward's original description. — "A specimen of a Crustacean placed in my 

 hands for examination by my friend Mr. R. Lechmere Guppy, from the Tertiary 

 formation of Trinidad, proves to be a portion of the dorsal surface of the carapace 

 of a Brachyurous Decapod — nearly approaching the Anomura — belonging to the 

 subsection Notopoda and the genus Ranina. 



The species of this genus (which was established by Lamarck in 1801) are 

 not only most singular in form, but they are of special interest to the paleontolo- 

 gist as occurring in the Nummulitic Limestone of Bavaria, Austria and Italy, 

 Asia Minor, Scinde, and the West Indies (Trinidad) , and also in the Oligocene 

 of Germany and the Miocene of Turin. Nor has the genus now disappeared; for 

 at the present day it is represented by the Ranina dentata of Latreille, which is 

 found living in the Sandwich Islands, the Moluccas, the Mauritius, and Japan, 88 

 whilst a nearly allied genus, the Raninoides, Edw., is found living in the Philippine 

 Islands, and Trinidad, having been collected in this latter locality by Mr. Guppy. 



"The Ranince are all burrowing forms of Crustacea living for the most part 

 in deep water, buried in sand or mud, for digging in which their limbs are most 

 admirably adapted. 



1 ' Unfortunately none of the appendages are preserved in the specimen under 

 consideration; but all the species of this genus are curiously sculptured upon 

 the dorsal surface of their carapaces, and the ornamentation is extremely char- 

 acteristic of the group. It consists of irregular transverse pectinated ridges, 

 sometimes interspersed with small punctuations, the ridges being more or less 

 curved and intercalating with one another. 



"In Prof. Reuss' work 89 these peculiarities are very well shown, but neither 

 in these nor in the various specimens which I have been able to examine can 

 detect the same ornamentation as that observable in the Ranina from Trinida 



I 



Haan 



Wissenschaften. Wien 



