1931
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From the Vernay-Archbold Expeditions to Madagascar this department received more than 600
specimens from the Quaternary, including pigmy hippopotamus, crocodiles, giant lemurs and many bird
bones, including Aepyornis and Mullerornis. Expeditions to the Triassic beds of Arizona and to the Lower
Cretaceous of Montana were unusually successful. An almost perfect skeleton of a Middle Triassic
reptile was collected in Arizona, a form ancestral to the alligators. In the lower Cretaceous beds of
Montana 9 dinosaur skeleton (Tenontosaurus) and a skeleton of the armored dinosaur, Hoplitosaurus. In
cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania Museum a large fauna of Late Pleistocene genera,
several of which are extinct, was found in a cave in SE new Mexico associated with a Folsom
arrowpoint. The Scarritt-Patagonian Expedition collected approximately 2,000 in all, about 1500 of
which were fossil mammals from the Santa Cruz formations. Of these, over 1,000 are from the
Notostylops beds, the oldest mammal bearing Fm. in South America. Also a giant fossil snake was
found in the Notostylops beds, as well as about 30 species of birds. Reconnaissance covered an area
of about 15,000 square miles and detailed collecting and study was undertaken at 17 localities. Mr. Childs
Frick sent out 7 expeditions, 5 in the late Tertiary and 2 in the Quaternary. These expeditions collected
near Barstow, CA, Santa Fe, NM, Ainsworth, NE, Pawnee Butte, CO, Lusk, WY and from the Quaternary
beds near Punin, Ecuador and Fairbanks, Alaska. In all 165 cases were secured.
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