240 Kcmsas Academy of Science. 



The localities in the various states under discussion in which 

 these early quadrupeds have been found are, in Kansas, Louisville 

 and near Winfield; in Ohio, the famous Linton mines; in Illinois, 

 the Mazon Creek beds ; in Pennsylvania, Cannelton and Pittsburg, 

 Three other states of the Union have furnished other remains, but 

 they are not worthy of mention in this connection. Nor are the 

 footprints discovered and partially described by Professor Mudge 

 from Kansas, and by Lea and King from Pennsylvania, of sufl&cient 

 diagnostic value to warrant consideration here. Since the creatures 

 from the Mazon Creek beds in Illinois and the Linton, Ohio, mines 

 have furnished the most complete material, we will confine our dis- 

 cussion in large part to them. 



Among the several hundred specimens of the early quadrupeds 

 collected by Dr. J. S. Newberry at the Linton mines, none is per- 

 haps more remarkable thdn the one first described by Doctor 

 Wyman in 1858 as Raniceps {Pelion) lyelli. Doctor Wyman and, 

 later, Professor Cope, who studied the same specimen, called atten- 

 tion to the decided frog- like aspect of the skull, and indeed the 

 comparison is a very striking one. It is barely possible that this 

 species (plate I) may represent a form of the ancestral group from 

 which our modern frogs have descended, although we have no direct 

 evidence on this subject, since the form of the present specimen is 

 preserved merely as a mold in the soft coal. There is present in 

 the specimen a portion of the right hind limb, which is strikingly 

 frog-like, and this tends to strengthen the suggestion of the skull 

 as to the anuran nature of the species. The vertebral column is, 

 however, quite long; entirely too long for the frogs as we know 

 them. The writer has in mind some embryological investigations 

 which ought to go a long way toward settling this question, and he 

 hopes to present a discussion of his results elsewhere. If Pt.lion 

 lyelli Wyman is not related to the early ancestors of the frogs then 

 we have not the slightest evidence of frogs or frog-like animals 

 prior to the Eocene. The form named by Marsh Eohatrachus 

 ugills from the Lower Cretaceous of Wyoming is too incomplete 

 and too insufficiently described to afford definite information as to 

 what it is. 



Among several specimens of Carboniferous quadrupeds received 

 by Professor Cope for study from Mr. R. D. Lacoe, of Pittston, 

 Pa., was a specimen of the earliest known reptile, which was in 

 1896 first placed by Cope in the species Tuditamis puncttdatus 

 Ctjpe. Later (1897), however, he removed the form to another 

 genus, Isodectes, but retained the same specific term for the form. 



