MOODIE: PERMIAN ANPHIBIA. 239 



hachidae as its members. Later in the same year Cope de- 

 scribed Acheloma from Texas. In 1885 Lydekker added other 

 genera and families to the group, notably Gondwanosaurus, 

 which he placed in the family Archegosauridse. In 1884 Cope, 

 and in the following year Fritsch, contributed further to the 

 knowledge of the Temnospondylia by the description of the 

 forms Dijjlospondylus and Cricotus from the Permian of Bo- 

 hemia and Texas. In 1888 Zittel proposed to place all temno- 

 spondylus amphibians under the suborder Temnospondyli in 

 two groups — A, those with rhachitomous vertebrse; B, those 

 with embolomerous vertebrae — for which two groups Cope had 

 previously, 1885, proposed the terms Rhachitomi and Embo- 

 lomeri, but had regarded them as coordinate with the group 

 Stegocephali. 



Case, Broili, and others have in recent years given additional 

 information on the forms previously described and have de- 

 scribed some new forms. In 1909 Dr. S. W. Williston, in his 

 essay on ''Trematops milleri from the Permian of Texas," was 

 enabled to give a restoration of the skeleton of that form. In 

 the present bulletin the writer will describe an interesting new 

 embolomerous amphibian under the name Spondylerpeton 

 spinatum, from the Coal Measures of Mazon Creek, Illinois. 

 This is the oldest of the known Temnospondylia. 



We know nothing of the ancestry of the Temnospondylia. 

 They occur in the Carboniferous and Permian, and if the Ster- 

 eospondylia are highly specialized Temnospondylia, as seems 

 probable, they also occur in the Triassic, but this is yet to be 

 proven. 



The geographical distribution of the Temnospondylia is as 

 follows : In the Carboniferous and Permian of North America ; 

 Europe; and Asia, in the Permocarboniferous of India, Gond- 

 wanosaurus. So far as the writer is aware they occur nowhere 

 else unless some of the little known forms from South Africa 

 will, on further search, reveal temnospondylous characters. It 

 is entirely too soon to arrive at any conclusions as to the paths 

 of migration of this group. They followed the way which was 

 open to other land animals, whatever that may have been. 



Nor can we say in what region the first of the Temnospondy- 

 lia lived. Judging from the remains so far discovered their 

 place of origin must be located in North America. The an- 

 nouncement of the discovery of the eryopoid form from Pitts- 



