BULLETIN 



of the 



Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 



VOLUME XI JUNE, 1916 No. 3 



THE HABITAT OF THE EURYPTERIDA 1 



BY 



Marjorie O'Connell, Ph.D. 



Curator in Palaeontology 

 Columbia University 



INTRODUCTION 



It has been the custom to consider that all fossils are the remains 

 of marine organisms unless obvious and indisputable evidence of their 

 fluviatile, lacustrine, or terrestrial habitat is available; a fossil found 

 without any other associates has been held to be marine until proved 

 to be otherwise, but never has the suggestion been made that such 

 a fossil was fluviatile until proved to be marine. Yet such a sugges- 

 tion would be most logical, and, as we shall see, it would be far more 

 natural than the one usually made. The early fish have always been 

 considered normally marine, though recent studies of the character of 

 the sediments in which their remains occur has led many of the former 

 advocates of the marine habitat to concede that the earliest fishes 

 lived in non-marine waters, perhaps lacustrine, but most probably 

 fluviatile. Similarly, limestone faunas were at one time referred with- 

 out question to a marine origin, but we now know that limestones of 

 purely marine organisms may be formed by eolian deposition, as in 

 the case of the Miliolitic limestone of the Kathiawar Peninsula of 

 Western India (Grabau, 87, 574) ? There is thus no a priori reason 



!This paper was awarded the Walker First Prize by the Boston Society of Natural History in 

 May, iar.4. 



2 Throughout this paper numbers in parentheses will refer to the bibliography at the end, p. 257; 

 the full-face type referring to the titles with the same number, the light-face numbers giving page 

 reference in the particular article. 



