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WESTERN SPELEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE INC. Museum of Natural History Nevada State Museum ^anta Barbara, California Carson City, Nevada No• 2 ITEMS OF INTEREST May 1958 ^ h"'*,l*',,,» “,**IB*"' ***«»^*“ « * f c * * * * * * iiwmiIi ?hij i »imi h i iw i i . i > ( > ( ^ | ^ | Editotial: What started out last November as a newsletter to keep our members, col­laborators, associates and contributors informed of our activities, simply got bog­ged. down between the 11th Santa Rosa Island Expedition; the Santa Maria Expedition; the 8th Lake Lahontan Expedition and the Asiatic flu. There hate been many "Items of Interest", which, like the news have now faded away, and the editor extends his apologies to the readers, and to any of our contributors who may have been left out. 'k'ir'k-k'kic'k Texas: WSI and the Santa Barbara Museum was honored by a visit from pioneer paleo-archeologist, Dr, E. H, Sellards, Director emeritus of the Texas Memorial Museum at Austin. A week or so later by: M^ssachuse11s: A visit from Dr. Douglas Byers, Director of the Peabody Foundation for archeology at Andover, Both gentlemen are experienced dyed-in-the-wool paleo-archeologists, and we were very pleased to have them look over our Winnemucca Caves' and Santa Rosa Island material of Early Man, Dr, Sellards named the Santa Rosa Is­land material as one of the four greatest finds in American antiquity. It is said it s easy to pick out a good archeologist, as his ideas will be identical with your own. Oklahoma: Wilbur (Buck) A. Davis, WSI archeo-speleologist presented a paper on the cultural analysis of the Winnemucca Caves, before the annual meeting of the Society for American Archeology held in the Stoval Museum at the University at Norman. Dr. Douglas W. Schwartz, formerly of Norman and now Director of the Museum of Anthropolo-? gy, at the University of Kentucky also spoke. Dr. Schwartz worked with WSIfs Grand Canyon project in 1955, California:? John C. Tyler, Baleo-archeologist assistant at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is successfully teaching archeology and'anthropology at the a-dult education evening classes. New York: Dr. W. S. Broecker, Geochemist at Laraont Geological Observatory has been successful in the radiocarbon dating of stalactites. This is another "first" for WSI and Wally. The necessary highly technical laboratory work done by Wally, gave us a date of about 20,000 years for a stalactitic layer three inches deep, with a "control" of about zero years for the outside layers. WSI, like a nagging wife, has bombarded Wally with materials and the theory that stalactites are dateable by radio­carbon methods. We feel this is a great accomplishment, not only for speleology and geochemistry, but for many other scientific disciplines, particularly that of dating climate. Maryland: Dr, George F. Carter of Johns Hopkins University, appeared on a coast to coast TV program in which he spoke on some of our work in the Winnemucca Caves and - 1 -