VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY IN 1908 459 



be compared with those of the dermal armour of the approxi- 

 mately contemporaneous lizard Placosaurns. 



One of the most important pieces of palaeontological work 

 accomplished during the year relates to the extinct birds of the 

 Oligocene phosphoritic deposits of Central France. These re- 

 mains have been described in great detail by Dr. Gaillard — who 

 has had the opportunity of inspecting nearly all the more im- 

 portant specimens — in a memoir published by the medical 

 faculty of the University of Lyons. This task was one of very 

 considerable difficulty owing to the fact that the bones are very 

 generally broken and always disassociated. The special interest 

 of the Quercy bird-fauna, as now revealed to us, is connected 

 with geographical distribution ; the remains indicating a most 

 remarkable mixture of what are now Old World, and especially 

 African, types on the one hand, with those at present character- 

 istic of Central and South America on the other. We have, 

 for instance, extinct generic types of secretary-birds associated 

 with species near akin to modern condors and trogons. As a 

 somewhat similar feature is likewise characteristic of the early 

 Tertiary bird-faunas of other" parts of France, we seem to have 

 additional and forcible evidence in favour of the view that during 

 Secondary and early Tertiary times Africa was connected with 

 South America by a great belt of land across the Atlantic. It 

 is the many different lines of evidence by which this theory 

 is supported that tend to raise it to a practical certainty. 



The year has witnessed several important memoirs on fossil 

 reptiles. In the first place, Professor von Huene has continued 

 his valuable account of the Triassic dinosaurs of Europe and 

 Asia (with special reference to the Asiatic types) in Koken's 

 Geol. unci Pal. Abhandlungen, six parts of text having 

 appeared during 1908. Of equal importance is a monograph of 

 the Ceratopsia, or horned dinosaurs of the Cretaceous, issued as 

 monograph No. xlix. of the United States Geological Survey. 

 The osteological portion of this memoir was written by the late 

 Mr. J. B. Hatcher, whose untimely death rendered necessary 

 its completion' by some" other palaeontologist. Dr. R. S. Lull 

 accordingly undertook the task of editing and completing the 

 bulky volume. According to Mr. Hatcher, the horned dinosaurs 

 are probably an exclusively American group, none of the 

 European dinosaurs placed therein having any claim to such 

 a position. In the case of Wealden bone, described as a 



