2o6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



was seen to become disorganised during the winter months, 

 the chlorophyll distributing itself around the nucleus, coalescing 

 to form plastids again in April. 



PALEONTOLOGY. By W. P. Pycraft. F.Z.S., A.L.S.. F.R.I. B.A., 



British Museum (Natural History), London. 



But little freshly garnered material seems to have come into 

 the hands of the Palaeontologists during the last few months, 

 since most of the published work which has been achieved is 

 concerned with the harvest of pre-war days. This, however, is 

 not a matter for surprise. 



Dr. Jacob L. Wortman contributes an extremely important 

 paper on some hitherto unrecognised reptilian characters in 

 the skull of the Insectivora and other mammals, to the Proc. 

 U.S. Nat. Mus., vol. Ivii, 1920, which must be very carefully 

 studied by palaeontologists and students of recent mammals 

 alike, for his discoveries will have far-reaching importance. 

 Among other things, he suggests that we should regard the 

 "malar foramen" of Tupaia of certain primates, and possibly 

 of the fruit-eating bats, as the remains of the lateral temporal 

 vacuity of the reptilian skull ; and he insists that the mam- 

 malian auditory chain originally arose from a chain of elements 

 similar, in all respects, to that now found in the Anourous 

 Batrachia. The long-cherished hypothesis of the intercalation 

 of the quadrate and articular into the mammalian auditory 

 chain he regards as " monstrously improbable if not alto- 

 gether impossible." Finally, he contends that the Cynodonts 

 can no longer be regarded as the long-sought ancestors of the 

 mammalia. They belong, on the contrary, to the Sauropsida. 



Messrs. Gerrit Miller and James Gidley describe a new rodent 

 from the Upper Oligocene of France {Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 

 vol. xli). The fragment of a skull on which this description 

 is based was found by Porrier, nearly sixty years ago, in a 

 calcareous butte at Peu-Blanc, Commune of Sorbier, and soon 

 after seems to have passed into the Cope Collection. Till now 

 it has never been carefully examined. The authors have 

 named it Rhizospalax porrieri. While its exact position can- 

 not be determined, owing to its fragmentary character, it 

 seems clear that it shows a combination of peculiarities found 

 in the living Spalax, Myospalax, and Tachyoryctes, though it 

 cannot be regarded as ancestral to any of its living relatives. 



Renewed exploration of the Huerfano Basin of Colorado, 

 under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, has resulted in very important additions to our know- 

 ledge of the Titanotheres of the Lower Eocene, and of the 

 relations thereto to the little-known fauna of the base of the 

 Bridger Formation, Wyoming, known as Bridger A. Com- 



