Book Description

This is a volume of collected papers published to honor the career of Clayton E. Ray, now Curator Emeritus in the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and Curator of Late Cenozoic Mammals and of Fossil Marine Mammals in the same department for more than 30 years before his retirement in 1994. The volume includes a preface, a biography and bibliography of Clayton E. Ray, and 19 papers devoted principally to Pleistocene mammals and to fossil marine mammals. Gary Morgan describes late Pleistocene mammalian faunas from several sites in southernmost Florida and discusses the Neotropical influence in Florida's Pleistocene faunas. Richard H. Tedford describes the basicranium of the Pleistocene giant wombat Phascolonus gigas Owen and discusses its significance in marsupial phylogenetic reconstruction. Gerardo De Iuliis and A. Gordon Edmund describe Vassallia maxima Castellanos, the only pre-Pleistocene pampathere known in which a skull and mandible are associated with osteoderms; the range of osteoderm variation in one associated individual allows them to synonymize other taxa that had been based on osteoderm differences. Paul W. Parmalee and Russell Wm. Graham report additional records of the giant beaver, Castoroides, from the mid-South. Frederick Grady, Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, and E. Ray Garton report the northernmost known occurrence of vampire bats in the Pleistocene of eastern North America. H. Gregory McDonald reports the second known occurrence of the badger Taxidea taxus in the Pleistocene of Kentucky and discusses the paleoecological implications of the occurrence. Jerry N. McDonald and George E. Lammers describe Bison antiquus from Ontario and discuss the evolution of bison in the Holocene of North America. Daryl P. Domning presents a new analysis and interpretation of the terrestrial posture in desmostylians. Thomas A. Demere and Annalisa Berta describe new material and present a phylogenetic analysis of the Miocene pinniped Desmatophoca oregonensis from Oregon. Irina A. Koretsky and Dan Grigorescu describe and evaluate the systematic position of the fossil monk seal Pontophoca sarmatica from the Miocene of eastern Europe. Irina A. Koretsky and Peter Holec describe a new, primitive, phocid pinniped from the early middle Miocene of Slovakia and discuss its bearing on the phylogeny and classification of pinnipeds. Irina A. Koretsky and Albert E. Sanders report remains of the oldest known phocid pinniped from the late Oligocene of South Carolina. R. Ewan Fordyce describes and discusses a bizarre archaic Oligocene dolphin from the eastern North Pacific, on which he bases a new species, genus, and subfamily. Christian de Muizon, Daryl P. Domning, and Darlene R. Ketten describe and discuss the paleobiology and behavior of an unusual walrus-convergent delphinoid cetacean from the early Pliocene of Peru. Susan D. Dawson and Michael D. Gottfried report paleopathologic conditions in a Miocene odontocete cetacean. Albert E. Sanders and Lawrence G. Barnes contribute two papers, both describing and analyzing new, primitive, cetotheriid mysticete cetaceans from the late Oligocene of South Carolina. James W. Westgate and Frank C. Whitmore, Jr., describe a new species of bowhead whale from the Pliocene Yorktown Formation in Virginia. James G. Mead and Rosemary G. Dagit present an account of the search for the 1880s manuscript of J.A. Allen's unpublished monograph on the mammalian orders Cete and Sirenia; the manuscript was not found but the 12 plates that were prepared for it are published herein.