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13. — Contributions to South African Vertebrate Palceontology . 



2. — On the Pareiasaurian gemis Propappus. — By E. Bkoom, M.D., 

 D.Sc, Victoria College, Stellenbosch. 



(Plate XLY.) 



In the Proc. Eoy. Soc, vol. xliv., No. 267 (1890), there appeared 

 an abstract of a paper by Professor Seeley, " On a Large Humerus 

 from the East Brak River, South Africa, indicating a New Order of 

 Fossil Animals which was more nearly intermediate between Reptiles 

 and Mammals than the Groups hitherto known." The type speci- 

 men is a bone. No. 36250, in the British Museum Collection, and 

 the name proposed for it is Propappus omocratus. No description is 

 given of the specimen in the abstract, though one or two compari- 

 sons are made with the humeri of various reptiles and mammals. 



In the Catalogue of the Fossil Reptiles in the British Museum, 

 which appeared in the same year, Lydekker accepts Seeley' s deter- 

 mination of the bone as a humerus, but gives no description by 

 which the form might be recognised. He figures, however, a pelvis 

 which probably belongs to the same animal. 



At this time almost nothing was known for certain of the limb 

 bones of Pareiasaurus. In 1889 the Tamboer's Fontein specimen 

 was obtained, and during 1890 it was being developed by Mr. Hall 

 m the British Museum. When the femur was displayed it must 

 have become at once evident that the specimen which had been 

 regarded as a humerus of a new type of reptiles was really the some- 

 what crushed thigh bone of a Pareiasaurian. Seeley's original paper 

 never appeared, but when, in 1892, he published his account of the 

 skeleton of Pareiasaurus he figured and described the specimen 

 which had been referred to Propappus as a right femur referable to a 

 species of Pareiasaurus or an allied genus, and gave it the name 

 Pareiasaurus {Propappus) minor. 



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