144 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
FOSSIL CETACEANS FROM THE FLORIDA PHOSPHATE 
BEDS 
By Glover M. Allen 
[Plates 9-12] 
The occurrence of fossil cetaceans in Florida was briefly made known 
by Leidy, who, in 1889, recorded ^‘half a dozen vertebrae and several 
teeth of several Cetacea of the family of the Dolphins’’ from the Peace 
Creek deposits. Concerning these remains, however, he makes no 
comment beyond the fact that they were ^‘undetermined.” More 
recently, in the commercial development of the phosphate beds, par- 
ticularly in Polk County, additional fragments have come to hght. 
Three of these are figured with brief mention, by Sellards (1915, p. 
102-105) in the Seventh Annual Report of the Florida Geological 
Survey, but no attempt has been made to identify the species which 
they represent. Through the kind offices of Mr. Anton Schneider, 
lately Superintendent of the Amalgamated Phosphate Company, and 
through the interest of Vice-President F. F. Ward of the International 
Agricultural Corporation with works at Mulberry, the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology has recently acquired a few additional remains 
of fossil Cetacea from Polk County, and these, together with several 
fragments generously loaned by the Florida Geological Survey, form 
the basis of this paper. 
GEOLOGICAL OCCURRENCE 
All the specimens come from what are known as the “land-pebble 
phosphate deposits,” which, according to current geological opinion 
(Sellards, 1915, p. 58) constitute a pebble conglomerate, accumulated 
under marine or estuarine conditions, probably during late Miocene 
or early Phocene time. This conglomerate forms the basal member 
of the “Bone-Valley formation,” and is derived chiefly from an older 
phosphatic marl of Upper Ohgocene age, from which have probably 
been redeposited the teeth of sharks and rays, casts of invertebrates, 
and siheified corals that occur with the broken but unworn bones of 
later-deposited cetaceans and crocodihans. It is beheved that this 
area was exposed as a land surface during most, if not all of the Miocene, 
at the close of which it was again submerged, thereby allowing the 
accumulation of the conglomerate together with the remains of aquatic 
vertebrates of the period, in what must have been a relatively shallow 
sea. 
