Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina, II

Abstract

Volume I of this projected series of three volumes included the prologue to the series, a biography of Remington Kellogg, and 13 papers on geology and paleontology other than Mollusca and Vertebrata (except otoliths). It was published in 1983 as <i>Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology</i> number 53. The present volume consists of a foreword and five chapters devoted to molluscan paleontology. The foreword recounts the earliest scientific publication of New World fossils, all mollusks, and reproduces Martin Lister's illustrations of them. William M. Furnish and Brian F. Glenister record the nautilid genus <i>Aturia</i> from the Pungo River Formation and discuss its occurrence elsewhere. Druid Wilson describes a new pycnodont oyster from the Pungo River Formation and lists the Cenozoic pycnodonts from the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain; he also summarizes the stratigraphic and geographic occurrences of the subgenera of <i>Ecphora, Ecphora</i> and <i>Stenomphalus</i>, naming a new species of each from the Pungo River Formation, and a new species of the former from the St. Marys Formation of Maryland. Thomas G. Gibson clarifies the relationships and stratigraphic utility of 17 taxa (including one new species from the Pungo River Formation) of pectinid bivalves on the basis of biometric study of large samples from lower Miocene to lower Pleistocene beds in and near the mine. Lauck W. Ward and Blake W. Blackwelder describe a molluscan fauna of 194 species, including 30 new species and 3 new subspecies, from the Chowan River (upper Pliocene) and James City (lower Pleistocene) formations, and conclude that the fauna reflects a subtropical thermal regime and that it was deposited under open marine conditions at depths not exceeding 25 meters.