A YEAR'S PROGRESS IN VERTEBRATE 



PALEONTOLOGY 



BY R. LYDEKKER. 



To record all the work that has been done in any branch of 

 science during one particular year till some months after its 

 completion is manifestly an impossible task ; and the following 

 notes accordingly relate only to such books and memoirs on 

 vertebrate palaeontology published during the last twelve months 

 or so which have come under the writer's notice. At the time 

 when these notes were written the year had still a couple of 

 months to run, and some of the papers published during the 

 latter part of 1905, or copies of which did not reach this country 

 till about that time, are therefore included in the survey. As 

 already stated, the review must of necessity be an imperfect 

 one; and among the papers which have been perused only 

 such as are of a certain amount of interest and importance 

 receive mention. 



Although the past twelve months, so far as the writer is 

 aware, have not produced any startling discovery in the past 

 history of vertebrates, yet a good tale of work has been accom- 

 plished, and much light thrown in several instances on obscure 

 points. 



The most important work issued during the period under 

 review is the British Museum Catalogue of the Fossil Vertebrata 

 of the Fayum, Egypt, by Dr. C. W. Andrews. Since, how- 

 ever, preliminary notices of many of the discoveries recorded 

 therein— such as the ancestry of the elephants— were published 

 considerably earlier, while the extinct vertebrates of Egypt will 

 form the subject of another article in Science Progress, very 

 brief mention of the volume will suffice on the present occasion. 

 The importance of the Egyptian discoveries consists not only in 

 the revelation of the pedigree of the elephant and the addition 

 of several totally new types to the list of mammals, but in 

 the evidence as to the existence of a relationship between two 



448 



