Dear Mike:

As I mentioned on the telephone Dr. John Talent, from Melbourne currently visiting Pasadena on a visiting Professorship, took a look at your collection 64 ACN 1471 and concluded that there were two specimens of trilobite pygidia from either a dechenellid (more likely) or phillipsiid and indicating the horizon is not older than Emsian and most probably younger, and perhaps even of Late Paleozoic age.

Dr. Takashi Hamada, a visiting post-doctoral fellow, who will be here through March incidentally, subsequently examined the same material and arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Dr. Hamada also commented, of course, that if the tails are phillipsiids then a Carboniferous or Permian age is indicated, although it is hard to determine becouse they are juvenile individuals. In any event, the things are certainly to be put in the post-Silurian. The fragmentary brachiopods are not, in my opinion, much help and would heartily recommend that a sample be examined for conodonts. I am returning it under separate cover to Jean Berdan for ultimate disposition.

I hope the above is serviceable to you.

Sincerely yuour,

Arthur J. Boucot