The most important locality for Pleistocene fossils in St. Lucie County, one may say in the whole State, is Vero. The topographical, geological, and palæontological conditions found here are described in the Eighth and Ninth Annual Reports of the Florida Geological Survey. Papers on the subject may be found also in the Journal of Geology for January 1917 and for October 1917; also in the American Anthropologist for the first and second quarters of 1918. Besides the large number of species of vertebrates found here, the interest is heightened by the fact that, associated with these, are human bones and objects of human manufacture. Through the valley of an insignificant stream was dug a large drainage canal, the construction of which brought to light vertebrate bones and teeth. Three beds of Pleistocene materials were exposed. At the bottom is found a bed of marl filled with marine mollusks and which is the geological equivalent of the coquina rock at St. Augustine. The same deposit is found in various places along the coast and has received from Dr. Sellards the name Anastasia formation. Above this lies a stratum composed mostly of sand, but containing also some muck. In the discussion of the locality this bed is designated as No. 2, the marl being No. 1. No. 2 has a thickness of about 2 feet. It in turn is overlain by No. 3, which consists mostly of vegetable matter and sand. It is called also the muck-bed. In places the muck is replaced by a bed of marl, which here and there may become pretty firmly consolidated. The thickness of No. 3 is about 2 or 3 feet. Vertebrate fossils are found in both No. 2 and No. 3. It is the purpose of the author first to present lists of the fossils which have been found in each of the upper beds, beginning with the stream of sand, No. 2.

List of fossil vertebrates found at Vero in stratum No. 2.

List of fossil vertebrates found at Vero, in stratum No. 3.

Besides those remains which are to be assigned with certainty to one or the other or both of the strata, there are a few others about whose place in the deposit there is uncertainty:

At a point about 3 miles west of Vero, a lower jaw of Elephas imperator (p. [163]) was found in the bank of the drainage canal. It was embedded in a matrix of brown sand which rests upon the stratum of marine shell marl.

The list of mammals found in stratum No. 2 shows that there are 29 species and that 21 of these are extinct. This high proportion of species no longer existing is of itself enough to show that the deposit is an old one. Again, such species as Elephas imperator and camels occur in the glaciated region only in Aftonian beds, and outside of the glaciated region only in those which are quite certainly of approximately the same age.

In the list of species found in stratum No. 3 there are 25 mammals, of which 12 species are extinct. These form, therefore, 48 per cent of the whole, indicating apparently a more recent geological time, perhaps about the Sangamon stage. It is true that the geologists hold that there has been continuous deposition and that no interval elapsed between the laying down of No. 2 and No. 3. In a region so near to the level of the sea, where the streams are small and short and have little fall, deposition must have gone on with extreme slowness; hence there may have been no period when deposition ceased. Apparently, too, there was a time when the region was somewhat lower than at present and salt water came up the stream as far as the locality where the fossils are found. The presence of Chelonia mydas, Caretta caretta, the two species of Caranx and Aëtobatis narinari may thus be explained.