934 NOTE ON A LABYRINTHODONT FOSSIL FROM COCKATOO ISLAND, 



in Palseontologia Indica (Ser. iv, Vol. I, Parts 4 and 5). The 

 attention however of the committee thus represented by Mr. Miall 

 was principally directed to the skull, which is in general the 

 most perfectly ossified, and therefore the most successfully 

 preserved (in the very rude methods which nature adopts) of all 

 portions of the skeleton. The Bothriceps of Huxley, from some 

 undefined part of Australia, is also known only by the head ; and 

 it will therefore be very difficult to make out the true relations 

 of our fossil unless, as I have already said, it may be determined as 

 a Mastodonsaurus. In Pictet's classical work on Palaeontology, 

 published indeed a long while ago, in 1853-7, we find in 

 plate XXIX. fig. 6, "Pieces scapulaires de la meme espece" 

 (Mastodonsaurus or Capitosaurus robustus) " un douzieme de la 

 grandeur naturelle." The figure, justly enlarged, corresponds so 

 closely with our specimen that I cannot doubt their practical 

 identity. It was the presence of the fossil in the University 

 collection, here shown, from Stuttgart, that led me in the first 

 instance to inquire what function it could have fulfilled in the 

 living animal, and it was Pictet who gave me the desired informa- 

 tion. He states in the text that " Gapitosaurus robustus H. de 

 Meyer, a ete trouve dans les etages superieurs du Keuper, pres de 

 Stuttgardt, M. Quenstedt pense qu' on doit reunir aux Mastodon- 

 saurus." Quenstedt's view seems to be accepted ; but the whole 

 group still presents many and serious difficulties. When Professor 

 Owen first identified Gheirot/iprium and Labyri?ithodon, a great 

 puzzle seemed to have been solved. But perhaps there are no 

 grounds for this identification ; it is quite as probable that the 

 famous foot prints were made by a reptile as by an amphibian ; 

 and we have actually no trustworthy evidence at all as to the 

 character of these antiquated creatures' limbs. Some were very 

 likely, like Dolichosoma, quite destitute of these appendages ; 

 others, like Archegosaurus, certainly possessed them. But how 

 they moved with them in the warm swamps or rivers which they 

 seem to have frequented, we do not know, nor have we reasonable 

 grounds for conjecture. 



