During the Spring and Summer of 1990, Arnold Müller processed four to five tons of sediments from the Western Atlantic Coastal Plain (US). Picking this material to 1 mm, he recovered not only his primary quarry, otoliths, but many shark teeth as well. In 1999, the results of his study were published.

In this well illustrated book, Müller not only provides an extensive study of the bony fish fauna, as reflected by their otoliths, but a broad overview of the sharks as well. In addition to stratigraphic, paleoclimatic/oceanic and taxa dispersal data, this western Atlantic fauna is compared with its European counterparts.

This study is structured as follows (360 pages.)
	Materials & Methods
	Overview of the Tertiary US Atlantic Coastal Plain
	Systematic Taxonomy (35 pages on sharks & rays, 150 pages on teleosts)
	Study Results:
	-	Paleoecological interpretation of the examined fauna (formations covered include the Aquia, Nanjemoy, Piney Pt., Old Church, Ashley, Belgrade, Calvert, Choptank, St Marys, Eastover & Yorktown)
	-	Biostratigraohy
	-	Development of the NW Atlantic Tertiary fauna from the Eocene to recent
	-	Climatic development in the Tertiary NW Atlantic based on fish fauna, including the relationships between oceanography, climate and biogeography
	-	Remarks on the evolution of some important groups
	-	Development of the NW Atlantic shelf fauna from the Paleocene to recent