A rich deposit of fossils in Gilchrist County, northern Florida, dating back some 18,000,000 years to the Mioceneers, has been purchased by the University for research purposes, Dr. Thomas Barbour, director of the Museum of comparative Zoology, announced last Thursday.

The deposit, on a forty-acre farm site, contains the only reasonably complete store of Miocene fossils in the United States cast of the Rocky Mountains so far reported, Barbour said.

In preliminary excavations, Barbour and members of the Museum staff found remains of several primitive horses, camels, dogs and rhinoceros.

The deposit is expected to give the first good picture of land-life on the eastern seaboard during the Miocene period. All other eastern Miocene deposits are primarily of marine life.

Theodore E. white, of the Museum staff, will work at the site this winter under a grant from the Milton Fund of Harvard. Several years of excavation will be required to piece together the picture of the fauna as found in the fossil bones.