G. GENEEAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 337 



Rocky Mountains. A single kind belongs to the woodpecker 

 tribe, while two are raptorial, and three gallinaceous, name- 

 ly, three kinds of turkeys. Twelve are waders and eleven 

 are swimmers. 



FOSSIL MAMMALS FEOM THE WEST. 



At the meeting of the American Philosophical Society, De- 

 cember 20, Professor Marsh, of Yale College, gave an account 

 of the extinct gigantic mammals which he had discovered 

 in the eocene of Wyoming, and recently assigned to the new 

 order Dinocerea. These animals were about as large as the 

 elephant, and had limbs somewhat similar, as stated in the 

 original description of the type species {Tinoceras a?iceps, 

 Marsh), which was found in 1870, and described in June, 1871. 

 The skull in this group presents a most remarkable combi- 

 nation of characters. It is long and narrow, and supported 

 two, and possibly three, pairs of horns. The top of the skull 

 was concave, and on its lateral and posterior margin there 

 was an enormous crest. There were large decurved canine 

 tusks, resembling those of the walrus, but no upper incisors. 

 The six premolar and molar teeth were quite small. Several 

 species of these remarkable animals have already been de- 

 scribed, but at present they can not all be distinguished with 

 certainty. In addition to the type species already mentioned, 

 Dr. Leidy has described a characteristic specimen as JJinta- 

 therium robustum, and a canine tooth, apparently part of the 

 same animal, under another name. The remarkable feature 

 of the skull in this group was first indicated in the name 27- 

 noceraSj which the speaker had proposed for one of the gen- 

 era. Professor Marsh stated that he had described several 

 species of this group, one of the most singular of which (Di- 

 noceras mirabilis, Marsh), was represented in the museum of 

 Yale College by a nearly perfect skeleton, and portions of 

 several others. In all of the sf>ecies the limb bones differ 

 considerably from those of proboscidians, while the skull is so 

 totally unlike any thing hitherto known that he could not re- 

 fer these extinct animals to that group, and hence had pro- 

 posed for their reception the order Dinocerea. 



Professor Marsh, at the same meeting, gave a brief account 

 of some of the more important results of his paleontological 

 researches in the Rocky Mountain region during the last three 



P 



