THE DAWN OF QUADRUFEDS 561 



When in the Inter ages of the existence of this old Lake its waters 

 became filled with vegetation and it had acquired the characters of a 

 marsh there came a disturbance in the earth's crust and the lake was 

 again submerged, and on its bottom was formed the thick stratum of 

 good coal which is now known to geologists as the " Ohio No. 6." This 

 coal was formed over the graves of the earliest quadrupeds. Here 

 through the vast stretches of geological time thev lav in their coaly 

 bed. After many, many eons of time the descendants of animals which 

 bad been their contemporaries came with tools fashioned with their 

 fore feet to dig out the coal to keep their naked bodies warm. These 

 were men and to these miners Ave owe a debt of gratitude for thus 

 bringing to light these treasures of the earliest quadrupeds. 



There was a man in the days when these coal mines were being 

 worked who appreciated the opportunity of collecting the remains of 

 these creatures and he deserves far more credit than the miners wdio 

 delved in the ground for the coal. This was Dr. J. S. Newberry, whose 

 name is to be ever associated with the first investigators into the history 

 of the primitive quadrupeds of this continent. Through his knowledge 

 of the geology of the region in which the mine was located he realize 1, 

 as no other did, the importance of gathering these remains as rapidly 

 as possible. The result was worthy of the exertion. The mines have 

 now long since been deserted, the village of Linton has gone out of 

 existence and even the spot where the mines were located is difficult to 

 find, so Dr. Hussakof tells me. Newberry's collection of the early 

 quadrupeds is now in the American Museum of Natural History of 

 New York City, and it will stand as a monument to the zeal of one of 

 the early investigators into the " Eotetrapoda "' of North America. 

 Newberry's collections have, for the most part been described by Cope, 

 who has done more on the morphology of the extinct Amphibia than 

 any other investigator in North America. 



Dr. Newberry found the first recognized amphibian in the Linton 

 deposits in 1856. The next year Dr. Wyman read a note on the speci- 

 men before the meeting of the American Association and the next year 

 he published a description of the form under the name Raniceps lyelli. 

 It was necessary to change the name Raniceps, so ten years later Dr. 

 Wyman proposed in its stead the term Pelion and the form is still 

 known as the Pelion lyelli Wyman. This is perhaps one of the most 

 extraordinary of all of the Amphibia which have came from these 

 deposits (Fig. 1). It was thought by Wyman, and later by Cope, that 

 the form had the characters of the modern frogs and in its general 

 appearance it certainly shows great resemblances to the modern frogs, 

 especially in the shape of its head and the length of the hind leg, which 

 Cope seems not to have observed. Among the other forms collected by 

 Newberry is the form shown in Fig. 2. One half of the slab containing 



VOL. LXXII. — 36. 



