1921] Merriam: Palaeontological Research on the Pacific Coast 245 



Oreg'oii, in wliieh he reviewed all previous work, contributed largely 

 to the middle Tertiary fauna, revised the determinations, and organ- 

 ized all of the much scattered literature contributed up to that time. 

 Ball's work was followed by the studies of C. E. Weaver at the 

 Universitj^ of Washington, Arnold and Hannibal, Bruce Martin, R. E. 

 Diekerson, and others. Especially the recent papers of Weaver, pub- 

 lished by the Geological Survey of Washington and by the University 

 of Washington, and of Arnold and Hannibal, in the Proceedings 

 of the American Philosophical Society, have opened up a wide and 

 almost unknown field in invertebrate palaeontology of the northwest. 

 Much still remains to be known of the composition, sequence, distri- 

 bution, and age of the faunas of the Puget Area, and no field of 

 invertebrate palaeontology of the West Coast may be expected to 

 furnish larger contributions in the next decade. 



With the exception of James Perrin Smith's papers on Triassic 

 Cephalopoda, Ralph Arnold's monograph of the Tertiary and Quater- 

 nary Pectens of California, and Packard's investigation of the 

 mactrine pelecypods, the greatest part of the work on West Coast 

 invertebrate palaeontology has up to this time concerned itself largely 

 with discussion of faunal sequence. In addition to the description 

 of special groups already discussed, particular reference should be 

 made to the work of W. S. W. Kew on the Echinoids, resulting, after 

 several years' work, in a monographic study of the whole group as 

 represented on this coast. Another group to which small additions 

 have very recently been made is that including the corals, which have 

 been worked through by J. 0. Nomland. 



HISTOEY OF VERTEBEATE PALAEONTOLOGY 



With the exception of a number of scattered notes on the occur- 

 rence of vertebrate remains in various parts of the Pacific Coast 

 region, the earliest publication on this phase of palaeontological work 

 is that of Louis Agassiz, describing a fossil fish fauna obtained by 

 the Pacific Railroad Survey in Tertiary beds of the Kern region in 

 the southeastern part of the Great Valley of California. This paper, 

 containing the description of eleven species of the shark-skate group, 

 was published in 1856 and remained the largest contribution to our 

 knowledge of the fishes of the region west of the Wasatch until the 

 appearance of David Starr Jordan's discussion of the fossil fishes 

 of California, in 1907, over half a century later. 



