1 86 THE COAL MEASURES AMPHIBIA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



Genus BAPHETES Owen, 1854. 



OWEN, Quart. Jour. Oeol. Soc. London, x, p. 207, pi. ix, 1854. 

 DAWSON, Air-breathers of the Coal Period, pp. 10-16, pi. ii, 1863. 



Type: Baphetes planiceps Owen. 



Known only from an incomplete skull, which is large, broader than long; squa- 

 mosals prolonged into obtuse horns. Teeth rather large, heterodont, arranged in a 

 single row. Orbits placed well forward, frontals small, surface bones sculptured. 



Baphetes planiceps Owen. 



OWEN, Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, x, p. 207, pi. ix, 1854. 

 DAWSON, Air-breathers of the Coal Period, pp. 10-16, pi. ii, 1863. 



Type: Specimen in the British Museum of Natural History. 



Horizon and locality: Near Pictou, Nova Scotia (Coal Measures). 



The parts preserved include the premaxillari.es, nasals, and portions of the 

 frontal, prefrontal, and maxillary bones. The fossil is embedded in a mass of Pictou 

 Coal from Nova Scotia and consists of the anterior extremity of the cranium (plate 

 22, fig. 6) and with the exterior surface of the bone embedded in the matrix, and its 

 substance, for the most part, reduced to a thin layer by abrasion of the exposed 

 inner layer. It displays accurately the contour of the fore part of the upper jaw, 

 which was broad, obtuse, and rounded. 



The premaxillaries, which show some obscure traces of a symphysial suture at 

 the median line, anterior to the nasal or naso-palatine vacuities, extend outwards, 

 on each side, for an extent of 2.5 lines and there join the maxillaries. Traces of 

 round alveoli for teeth, some of which are 2 lines in diameter, are visible on the 

 alveolar border of the premaxillaries. The alveolar border is continued by the max- 

 illary bone for an extent of 4.5 inches beyond the premaxillary border, and this 

 border shows still more distinct traces of alveoli, of a circular form, about a line in 

 diameter and rather close set in a single series. The fore part of the orbit is very 

 unequivocally displayed, the smooth inner or under surface of the bone forming 

 that part being entire; and this shows the fore part of the orbit to be formed, partly 

 by the maxillary, partly by the lacrimal or prefrontal bone in close sutural union 

 therewith, a structure which does not exist in any recent or fossil fish with a dentig- 

 erous superior maxillary bone. Where the substance of the bone has been detached 

 so far as to expose the external layer in contact with the coal, as, e.g., on the frontal 

 and part of the prefrontal bones, the external surface of those bones is shown to 

 have been impressed by subhemispherical or elliptical pits, from I line to 1.5 lines 

 in diameter, and with intervals of half of that extent. This coarsely pitted character 

 agrees with that presented by the other surface of the similarly broad and flat 

 cranium of the labyrinthodonts. 



From the characters above specified, therefore, I conclude that this fossil is 

 the fore part of the skull of an extinct family of the labyrinthodonts. It agrees with 

 them in the number, size, and disposition of teeth; in the proportions and mode of 

 connection of the premaxillaries, maxillaries, nasals, prefrontals, and frontals, and in 

 the resultant peculiarly broad and depressed character of the skull. The traces of 



