Mollusca and crustacea of the miocene formations of New Jersey / Моллюски и ракообразные миоценовых образований Нью-Джерси

The fossils of the Miocene beds of New Jersey, like those of the Cretaceous 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 are mentioned 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 Shiloh, 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.