32 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-NINTH ANNUAL REPORT. 
underlying shell marl, which forms a definite and undisputed datum 
plane, is late Pleistocene in age. Its species all exist in nearby 
waters at the present time, and many of them have been recorded 
from shell marls found from southern New Jersey to the Florida 
keys and forming a part of the lowest and latest well-defined terrace 
plain previously mentioned as having been named Talbot in Mary¬ 
land, Chowan in North Carolina and Pensacola in Florida. It fol¬ 
lows that the vertebrate remains which are so numerous at Vero 
cannot possibly be of middle or early Pleistocene age unless they are 
regarded as having been reworked from older deposits, and I cannot 
conceive that this was possible, nor do the vertebrate paleontologists 
who have examined the deposits consider that such was the case. 
In fact, I believe that if it had not been for the over estimate of the 
age of this vertebrate fauna, that Dr. Chamberlin would not have 
advanced his hypothesis of the reworking and mechanical mixing 
of these bones, nor that Dr. Hrdlicka would have insisted on the 
human burial theory to account for the presence of the human 
skeletal remains. While no human bones were collected during the 
time that I studied the deposits, I did collect a number of bone 
implements and fragments of pottery in association with the plant 
fossils that could not possibly have reached their resting place 
through the agency of human burial. Nothing is more reason¬ 
able than to suppose that the larger elements in the 
Middle Pleistocene, fauna of more northern areas should 
have lingered for thousands of years in this more genial 
southern clime until the presence of man in considerable 
numbers and the changing climate, as is attested by the fossil plants, 
should have brought about the extinction of a large percentage of 
the fauna. The fauna itself confirms the rather limited data fur¬ 
nished by the fossil flora of this change in climate, since it indicates 
a more mesophytic habitat than exists today in the vicinity of Vero. 
Regarding the burial theory of Dr. Hrdlicka, it may be said that a 
part of the plant material came from immediately above one. of the 
human skeletons, and I cannot conceive’of the possibility of not 
being able to see evidence of artificial burial in material made up of 
alternate layers of sand and matted leaves and other vegetable 
debris. I therefore see no reason to doubt that relative modern 
men were contemporaneous with this partially extinct fauna of 
Middle Pleistocene aspect which survived in Florida to the late 
Pleistocene. With regard to the exact age of the Vero deposits 
