MOLLUSCA AND CRUSTACEA OF THE MIOCENE FORMATIONS 



OF NEW JERSEY. 



By Robert Parr Whitfield. 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 



The fossils of the Miocene beds of New Jersey, like those of the Creta- 

 ceous and Eocene beds, have never until now been systematically studied 

 or recorded. Many of them which are as yet peculiar to the deposits of 

 the State have, however, been described haphazard, as it were, by different 

 writers, with scarcely any other object in view than that of describing 

 the species which happened to fall into their hands. In this way a few of the 

 most prominent forms have become known, but very few species ai*e men- 

 tioned in any of the lists of Miocene fossils as pertaining to the New 

 Jersey fauna. In Mr. F. B. Meek's list of Miocene fossils published -in 

 " Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections" there are only seventeen species 

 mentioned as from New Jersey: two forms of Bryozoans, two Oysters, one 

 Spondylus, one Crassatella, two Carditamera, one Astarte, one Venus, one 

 Periploma, a Corbula, a Saxicava, and four Gasteropods. A detailed list 

 of these is given in Prof. Cook's Geology of New Jersey for 1868, p. 297. 

 Prof. Heilprin in his " Tertiary Geology of the Eastern and Southern 

 United States" enumerates twenty-seven species, seventeen of which he 

 gives as peculiar to the State; and in an article on "The Miocene Mollusca 

 of the State of New Jersey" 1 he enumerates thirty species as known at the 

 time of publication. On page 398 he adds to the list from collections obtained 

 on excursions to the marl pits at Shilohy.N. J., giving fifty species from this 

 one locality. On pages 402-404 he gives a summary of the known mol- 

 luscan fauna of the State up to that date (1887), amounting to eighty-two 

 species, and he describes among them three new species and one variety, 



1 Proceedings of the Acad. Nat. Sciences of Philadelphia for 1887, p. 397. 



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