VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN 1909 667 



Assuming the determination to be correct, we appear to have 

 in this case an instance of a migration from Asia analogous 

 to that of the tragelaphine antelopes referred to above. In the 

 second paper the author describes, under the name of Teratornis, 

 remains of an accipitrine bird of larger size than a condor, 

 and characterised by the powerful beak, and enormous nasal 

 apertures. Of minor interest is a note on the skeleton of a 

 perching bird from the Pliocene of Leghorn, contributed by 

 Mr. W. P. Pycraft to the Zoological Society's Proceedings for 

 1909, p. 368, where the specimen is assigned to the genus 

 A nth us. 



Commencing my notice of work on reptiles with the dino- 

 saurian group, reference may be made to the description by 

 Dr. E. Steckow, in the Centralblatt fur Mineralogie, 1909, 

 pp. 700-705 of some unusually well-preserved tracks oilguanodon 

 from the Lower Cretaceous of Bael Rehburg, Munich. 



As mentioned in my article of last year, Dr. Hay some time 

 ago criticised the pose of the skeleton of Diplodocus carnegtei, as 

 mounted at Pittsburg and suggested that the limb-bones should 

 be somewhat angulated to one another. Whether this criticism 

 be justified or not, there seems to be no doubt that the foot 

 should be turned on one side in sloth-fashion instead of being 

 wholly plantigrade. 



Recently Mr. J. Ternier, in a paper published in the Sitzber. 

 Ges. Naturfor., Berlin, 1909, pp. 193 et seq., has gone consider- 

 ably further than Dr. Hay, and published a figure of the 

 Diplodocus skeleton in which the scapula and coracoid are placed 

 very low down and the humerus and femur articulated nearly 

 horizontally, so that the body of the reptile is brought within a 

 short distance of the ground, while the head and neck are reared 

 aloft in swan-like fashion ; the feet being applied flat to the 

 ground. Soon after the publication of Mr. Ternier's paper a 

 communication from Prof. O. Abel appeared in the Verh. k.k. 

 Zool. Bot. Ges. Wien, 1909, pp. 1 17-21, in which it is urged that 

 the sauropod dinosaurs were elephant-footed ; that is to say 

 they had semi-digitigrade feet supported posteriorly by foot- 

 pads. To this Mr. Ternier {Sitzber. Ges. Naturfor., Berlin, 1909, 

 pp. 527-57) makes a long reply, in which it is maintained that 

 all these reptiles were strictly plantigrade. In a third paper, I.e. 

 pp. 507-536, Mr. Ternier answers those who have criticised 

 his original article on the pose of Diplodocus, 



