EVER SINCE MAURY: PRI’S “NEOGENE PALEONTOLOGY OF THE NORTHERN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC” PUBLICATION SERIES AND THE SYSTEMATIC WORK THAT REMAINS

Carlotta J. Maury (1874-1938) was one of the first American women to earn a Ph.D. (Cornell Univ., 1902) in geology and then attain subsequent employment in the field. Among her many achievements was her 1917 opus—published in the Paleontological Research Institution’s Bulletins of American Paleontology (BAP)—on the taxonomically rich and temporally and biogeographically important Neogene fossil record of the northern Dominican Republic (DR). Remarkably, the publication of this 251-page work followed a corresponding expedition that she led to the DR less than one year prior. Maury’s monograph documented over 450 species (including nearly 200 that she described in the work), including the stratigraphic occurrences of many of the taxa, and is currently in the process of being updated for republication in BAP.

Maury’s monograph, which summarized the prior 67 years of paleontological research on the Neogene fossil record of the DR, set the stage for the publication of the “Neogene Paleontology of the Northern Dominican Republic” series in BAP that began nearly 70 years later. Between 1986 and the present day, 24 systematic monographs have been published in this series, resulting in comprehensive taxonomic treatments of hundreds of species of mollusks, corals, brachiopods, ostracods, echinoderms, and fishes, as well as detailed summaries of their stratigraphic occurrences, often resolved at the scale of meters. Numerous additional species that were previously described or reported from the Neogene of the DR, however, still await careful systematic review and revision. These gaps in our knowledge limit our understanding of what is otherwise one of the paleontologically best-known Cenozoic sections in the world. Resolving these taxonomic blind spots will help to paint a comprehensive picture of tropical American marine biodiversity during an interval of time (late Miocene to early Pliocene) that immediately preceded consequential environmental change in the region.