On the Osteology of Nyctosaurus. 161 



I am now satisfied that the femur in question belongs to a heavy-boned 

 pterodactyl or some allied, hitherto unknown, animal. The very peculiar 

 head of the bone with its articular convexity directed upward, the posi- 

 tion of the trochanter, the hollow shaft and its curvature are characters 

 all found in pterodactyls and in no other animals of which I have any 

 knowledge. The entire length of the bone must have been about 350 or 

 400 mm., and while the walls are unusually thick, they are not propor- 

 tionally much more so than in Dermodactylus, the type of which I 

 distinctly remember. Dermodactylus is from the so-called fresh-water 

 beds of the Wyoming Jurassic, which I have long believed to be con- 

 temporaneous with the Comanche beds of Kansas, and which I correlate 

 with the Wealden of Europe. The forms cannot be the same, since this 

 is very much larger. 



May 14, 1903. 



In an article by Mr. F. A. Lucas in the Report of the Smithsonian 

 Institution for 1901, there is given an excellent drawing of a skull of 

 Pteranodon {Ornithostomd), made "from a specimen in the Yale University 

 Museum." From my recollection of various peculiarities shown in the 

 figure, as also from certain accidental peculiarities, such as the fracture 

 of the infra-narial bar, faithfully reproduced in Professor Marsh's drawings, 

 I have very little hesitation in saying that the specimen there illustrated 

 is the type of the genus Pteranodon, upon which was based the figure so 

 long current in text-books. Should I be in error in this identification, I 

 shall be glad to be corrected, hoping, however, in that case, that a true 

 figure of the type specimen may be published. 



In the summer of 1891, Professor E. C. Case and myself uncovered 

 from the firm yellow chalk of western Kansas, the uninjured posterior 

 part of a skull of Pteranodon, with its sagittal-crest entire and evenly 

 rounded. A figure of this specimen was given in PI. I, Vol. I, of the 

 Kansas University Quarterly, to which I beg to refer the reader. The 

 specimen is now preserved on a slab in the museum of the University of 

 Kansas, and I doubt not that the crest as disclosed from the matrix and 

 as represented in the figure, is all that the animal possessed in life. Mr. 

 G. F. Eaton, however, in the July number of the American Journal of 

 Science takes me to task for criticising the original figures of Pteranodon, 

 which he admits were faulty, and for my "restoration" of the skull, assert- 

 ing that I was wrong. He now adds to the type a much longer crest than 

 did the author. The basis for Professor Marsh's restoration is shown in 

 Mr. Lucas's plate, if my identification is correct, and the drawing has 

 been faithfully made. 



