10 Coal-Formation Fossils. 



the coal, he found them to consist of 94 placoids belonging 

 to the families of Shark and Ray, and 58 ganoids. One 

 family of the latter he called " sauriod fish," including the 

 Megalichthys, Holoptychius, and others often of great size, 

 and all predaceous. Although true fish, and not interme- 

 diate between fish and reptiles, they seem undoubtedly to 

 have been more highly organized than any living fish, re- 

 minding us of the skeletons of true saurians by the close 

 sutures of their cranial bones, their large conical teeth, 

 striated longitudinally, and the articulations of the spinous 

 processes with the vertebrae. Until very lately it was 

 imagined by some geologists that this ichthyic type was 

 the more highly developed, because it took the lead at the 

 head of Nature before the class of reptiles had been created. 

 For it was taken for granted that reptiles were first intro- 

 duced into the earth in the Permian period, many palaeonto- 

 logists considering that the limits of our knowledge of the 

 existence of any class of animals in past time, coincided 

 exactly with the date of its creation. 



At length, in the year 1844, M. Herman von Meyer de- 

 scribed, under the name of Apateon pedestris, the first skele- 

 ton of a reptile from the coal-measures. He supposes this 

 animal, found at Miinster-Appel, in Rhenish Bavaria, to be 

 nearly related to the Salamanders. Three years later, in 

 1847, Professor von Decheri discovered in large concretion- 

 ary nodules of clay-ironstone, in the coal-field of Saarbriick, 

 the skeletons of no less than three distinct species of air- 

 breathing reptiles, which were figured and described by the 

 late Professor Goldfuss, under the generic name of Arche- 

 gosaurus. These valuable additions to the carboniferous 

 fauna were procured at the village of Lebach, between 

 Strasburg and Treves. The species of ichthyolites and 

 coal-plants in the accompanying shales leave no doubt of the 

 exact age of the formation. The largest of the three species, 

 called Archegosaurus Decheni, must have been three feet six 

 inches long. Fortunately, the skull, teeth, and the greater 

 portion of the skeleton, nay, even a large part of the imbri- 

 cated covering or horny scales of the skin, have been faith- 

 fully preserved in two of the specimens. They were con- 



