VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN 1908 457 



Ptolemaia have been respectively proposed, the latter being 

 made the type of a family of uncertain position. Whether 

 the true affinities of these fossils will ever be ascertained 

 remains to be seen. More satisfactory is the determination 

 of two new genera, Phiomys and Metaphiomys, of the Eocene 

 rodent family Eomyidce. These appear to be the only new 

 fossil rodents (other than Pleistocene) described during the 

 year. Apidium phiomensis was evidently a small frugivorous 

 or omnivorous creature, with partly cuspidate cheek-teeth ; 

 but at present its affinities are indeterminable. 



Beaver-skulls from the British Pleistocene are discussed by 

 Dr. Forsyth Major in the Zoological Society's Proceedings ; while 

 others from Continental deposits form the subject of an article 

 by Dr. G. Hagmann in Mitt. Geol. Landesanst Elsass-Lothringen, 

 vol. vi., p. 369. 



The above mention of a faunistic paper naturally leads on 

 to others, among which reference may be made to one 

 by Mr. B. Brown, published in the Memoirs of the American 

 Museum (vol. ix. p. 157), containing descriptions of twenty-two 

 new species and two new genera of mammals from an 

 ossiferous fissure in Arkansas ; none of which are, however, 

 of very special interest. A translation of part of Professor 

 Deperet's valuable paper on the Tertiary migrations of mammals 

 has been published in the American Naturalist. Reference may 

 be made in this place to Mr. Cushman's list of the type 

 specimens preserved in the Boston (U.S.A.) Natural History 

 Society, which appeared during the year in vol. xxxiii. of the 

 Proceedings of that body. 



Three papers on fossil American cetaceans have been 

 published by Mr. F. W. True. In the first of these, which 

 appeared in the February issue of the Proceedings of the 

 Philadelphia Academy, the author discusses the fossil Cetacean 

 beak from Charles County on which Cope founded the genus 

 and species Rhabdosteus latiradix, together with certain other 

 fragmentary beaks and teeth which have been assigned to the 

 same form. In Mr. True's opinion it is probable that, while 

 the teeth belong to the widely-spread genus Schizodelphis, the 

 type beak is generically distinct. Of the other two beaks, one 

 apparently indicates a dolphin allied to the Amazonian Inia, 

 while the third may be provisionally assigned to the extinct 

 genus Priscodelphinus. In the second communication {Smithsonian 



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