8 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



John C. Merriam of the University of California in the lower 

 deposits of the Pliocene, near Berkeley, in fresh water beds.* 



The writer fonnd skulls of the Beaver (Castor fiber ?) in the 

 marshy banks of the San Joaqnin River above Antioch. These 

 have not been subjected to critical examination. 



NON-MAMMALIAN VERTEBRATES. 

 Sharks. 



Numerous species of fossil sharks have been found in Cali- 

 fornia, notably in Kern county, where ten of the species de- 

 scribed by Agassiz have been recognized. 



(Numerous specimens of the teeth and bones of vertebrates 

 found in the Quaternary by the writer have not, as yet, been de- 

 termined.) 



In Volume XXIV. of the "Proceedings of the United States 

 National Museum, AVashington, 1902," Dr. Frederic A. Lucas 

 has described "A Flightless Auk, Mancalla Calif orniensis, from 

 the Miocene of California." 



The genus was founded upon "a nearly complete left hu- 

 merus found in excavating Third street tunnel at Los Angeles, 

 California, in strata considered \)Y Mr. W. H. Dall as belonging 

 to the Upper Miocene or Lower Pliocene, probably the former." 



It is probable, as Professor Whitney and Dr. Cooper sug- 

 gested, that the fragmentary bones and teeth of many of the 

 extinct mammals which have been found in the Quaternary of 

 California are portions of animals inhabiting California during 

 the Miocene and Pliocene periods, and that during some of the 

 great changes resulting from the erosion and detrition caused 

 by the local elevations and depressions of the surface they were 

 weathered out and transported to distant localities by the rush 

 of waters over their original place of deposit, and were again 

 buried in the debris of later epochs. 



All of the fossil remains of the before mentioned animals, 

 which the writer has found in undoubted Quaternary deposits, 

 indicate that the bones had been thus distributed. 



Some of those found in the Pliocene may have been originally 

 deposited in Miocene formations. In one instance the writer 

 found in the bed of Alameda Creek, near Niles, Alameda Coun- 

 ty, a boulder of very hard, coarse conglomerate in which was 

 imbedded a perfect molar tooth of a mastodon. The boulder 

 was luidoubtedly a portion of a Pliocene deposit, some miles 

 distant, and had been rounded off by the combined action of 

 water and the friction of other rocks during its rough journey 

 in the rocky bed of the present creek, and had it not been for 



^ Bnlletiu of the Department of Geologv, University of California, 

 Vol. I, No. 1.3, 1896. 



