FOSSIL SHELLS 105 



According to Ameghino's notes we were in the midst 

 of a highly fossiliferous area, so next morning we went out 

 with high hopes. Night, however, brought us together 

 again without any fossil bones, though we had found con- 

 siderable quantities of marine shells in the rocks. In one 

 spot in particular the rocks were simply peppered with 

 petrified sea urchin shells, mostly of the type commonly 

 known as "sea dollars." Finding the upper beds to be 

 purely marine, we were further disappointed in finding 

 that the lower beds showed unmistakable signs of having 

 been greatly altered by the action of heat, the clays be- 

 ing baked until almost like porcelain, and the heat having 

 brought out a series of yellow, pink, and brown colors 

 which were highly picturesque, but showed that we could 

 expect little or nothing in the fossil line. 



The next day Shumway and Turner went to the shore 

 to hunt up some shell heaps reported to us, while Stein 

 and I made a careful section of the series of rocks exposed 

 here. The boys found the reported shell heaps, but these 

 were very thin and of dubious origin, yielding only a few 

 seal bones and one arrow point. We had hoped they would 

 show something about the early Indians. 



November 22 being my birthday, was declared a holi- 

 day, which the boys put in developing our accumulation 

 of photographic films, while Billy and I rode up the beach 

 in search of Ameghino's Notostylopus beds, which he said 

 extended from the town nine miles along the beach to 

 Point Casamajor. We went the whole distance examin- 

 ing the cliff all the way, but not finding a trace of them. 

 However, coming back we blundered into a small pocket 

 in one of the canyons, where we found a few fragmentary 

 bones. This I believe is Karl Ameghino's locality, but in 

 a couple of hours we went over all the exposures of that 

 horizon, and had picked up about all the bones which 

 could occur there; so we had to ride back once more 

 disappointed. 



