10. Cephalopoda

In arranging a list of fossil Cephalopoda of the Malayan Archipelago it soon proved that the bulk were found on Timor. On some of the other islands viz. Rotti, the Sula islands, Taliabu and Mangoli, Buru, the Misol Archipelago and Sumatra a good deal have been found also. The oldest informations on the occurrence in the Archipelago date from 1705. Rumphius described (jurassic) belemnites or dactyli idaei as he called them which were found on the island Taliabu. That old information is important as later it was the direct cause of the carrying out of further investigations on the Sula islands and in the Molucs (Verbeek, Boehm, Siboga expedition). Important material has already been found there (Brouwer, Boehm) and these discoveries are sufficient to suppose that on these islands still more very important stratigraphical as well as palaeontological information is yet to be found. In 1865 Beyrich published a short paper on fossil cephalopods and other fossils in Timor. Martin gave in 1880 in „die Tertiärschichten von Java”, a description of Nautilus javanus, the only tertiary representative of this order from the archipelago known in literature. This species is the only fossil cephalopod found on Java. In the same year yet another paper appeared by Roemer on permian fossils from Sumatra (collected by Verbeek). This formed the commencement of the great series which culminated in the descriptions of the fossils collected by the expeditions on Timor in „Palaeontologie von Timor” and some volumes of the „Jaarboek van het Mijnwezen in Nederlandsch Indië”. These and other descriptions have already given us much stratigraphical and palaeontological information about pretertiary sedimentary rocks on several islands. Up to this time the cretaceous cephalopods are scarce. The bulk belong to the Triassic, whereas both the Permian and the Jurassic period have known a rich fauna of cuttle-fish in the region of the recent archipelago. Besides Nautilus javanus Mart. only one other tertiary cephalopod has been described viz. Kapal batavus Mart. This fossil is the only known representative in the archipelago of the fossil Argonautidae. Some papers of little importance for our purpose, many of which are practically a repetition of those already named here, have been omitted in the bibliography.