The collections made by Tournier for Gaudry came chiefly from an exposure south of the Deseado River, some 15 miles above the mouth of the river.[2]
Our collection came from the Chico Branch of the Chubut River, about three miles east of the river, and almost due west of Puerto Visser. As mentioned above on account of the close coincidence of the various species and because Ameghino indicates a locality in the neighborhood, I think that our locality is the same as one of his, I should judge it the one from which he obtained a considerable part of his types. This is of importance; for, if in Ameghino’s type locality, the determination of the species, as the same as those of Ameghino’s, is much more certain.
In the accompanying map I have indicated the localities given by Ameghino, those of Tournier, and our own.
Fig. 1. Map of Patagonia showing localities of Deseado beds.
CHAPTER II
Age of the Deseado Formation
The locality worked by the Amherst party is situated about three miles east of the Chico River, just across the line of the homestead of D. J. Venter as plotted on the Plano de la Gobernation del Chubut, 1910, by A. Lefrançois. This would be 45° 10ʹ S., and 67° 32ʹ W. (or as on the map 9° 15ʹ W. of the meridian of Buenos Aires). The exposure is on all sides of an elongated hill about a sixth of a mile long, averaging 200 feet wide, and constricted in the middle to a narrow neck. [Figure 2] shows a section of the hill, made along the north side, and indicates the varied character of the stratified deposits.
The material varies from brown sandy clay shales, to yellow sandy clay with concretions, and is capped with a varying layer of greenish sand, which, in some places, is coarse and irregular, in others fine and uniform, and in still other places is mixed with considerable quantities of volcanic ash. In it are many mud balls and also bits of bone which have been worn round, others but slightly worn, and finally bones and skeletons which apparently have been buried where they fell. This green sand is mostly covered with a layer of two feet of hard sandstone of the same composition as the rest of the bed, but cemented into a dense layer. Above the green sand is a layer of fine grey sand, prettily crossbedded, and of varying thickness, but without fossils. Remains of vertebrate animals occurred in the brown clay, the yellow clay and the green sand, and in all the cases fossils were of unusual abundance so that in this limited locality we collected over 300 specimens.
