MUTILATED CRANIUM OF A LARGE FISH — KTHERIDGE, 7 



posed pectoral fins {/.). Of the branchiostegal rays there are 

 portions of nine protruding through the matrix on the right-hand 

 side, and a less number on the left. There are ten anterior 

 vertebne partially weathered out, occupying a length of four and 

 a half inches, but as the four posterior have slid slightly from 

 their normal position, the actual fore-and-aft space occupied by 

 the series of ten will be rather less. The normal anterior vertebrte 

 are from five-sixteenths of an inch to three-eigths in length, and 

 all bear defined rims at both ends, and pits, almost round on the 

 second and third from the front, but more oval in a fore-and-aft 

 direction on the succeeding centi^a. The ribs are long and 

 moderately stout, no trace of neural arches remaining. At the 

 sides of the vertebrje, but separated from them by mati'ix, ai-e 

 roughened bony surfaces of some extent, which my colleague, 

 Mr. E. R. Waite, suggests may be the larger basal joints of the 

 pectoral fins compressed together and transversely displaced. 

 Teeth are visible on both maxillte, but not on the dentaries in 

 consequence of the overlapping of the former over the latter, ex- 

 cept at their immediate fractured anterior ends ; at these points 

 one tooth is visible on either side. The teeth are strong, hollow, 

 and conical, and not compressed to a sharp edge, extending along 

 the whole length of the maxillae as far as these bones are pre- 

 served, and set in alveoli. The remains of about twenty-four are 

 visible on the right maxilla and about fifteen on the left. The 

 single teeth preserved at the anterioi- fractured ends of the den- 

 taries do not appear to differ in size or character from those along 

 the maxillae. 



The vertebrae closely resemble those figured by Dr. A. Smith 

 Woodward "as possibly referable to [his] Claclocycliis siveeti"*^ a 

 species dependant on certain detached scales from the Lower Cre- 

 taceous of Queensland. Dr. Woodward has also figured the left 

 lateral view of the anterior portion of a skull from the same series 

 of rocks as Foi-thp'ii,s mistralis,'' to which the present fossil bears a 

 very suspicious resemblance. In the light of Cope's type figure 

 of the cranium of Portheiis^^ and his remarks on the teeth — " Sizes 

 irregular ; the premaxilla, median maxilla, and anterior dentary 

 teeth much enlarged"" — there is a possibility of Dr. Woodward's 

 fish being an Ichthyodectes also. In the figui-e of Fortheus aush-alis 



s Woodward— Ann. Mag. Nat. Hi&t., (6), xiv., 1894, pi. x„ f. 7. 



■^ Woodward — Loc. ft/., pi. x., f. 1, la. 



** Cope — Report U. S. Geo). Survey Territories (Hayden's), li, 1875, p. 



184, f. 8, pis. xxxix and xli (P. molossus). 

 3 Cope — Report U.S. Geo). Survey Territories (Hayden's), ii, 1875, p. 



190. 



