Geological Papers. 123 



included a fine pair of fins with pectoral arches connecting them of 

 the well-armed snout-fish, Protosphyrmna. Each fin, enameled and 

 sharp as a knife, with forty teeth, is three feet in length. What 

 must have been a strong and efPective weapon of offense or defense 

 is shown in a skull of this same fish, with its long, bony rostrum, 

 oval in section and terminating in a sharp point. In addition to 

 this dagger, fixed at the end of the head, the snout-fish possessed 

 eight sharp, lancet-shaped teeth that projected forward. When 

 the sharp point of the rostrum was driven into the victim's side 

 these lancets widened the rent, till the animal's head could be forced 

 into the breach up to its eye-rims, while their forward slant enabled 

 the head to be quickly withdrawn for a fresh attack. Even the 

 Kansas mosasaurs, who were no mean fighters themselves, must 

 have avoided this great fighter among fishes. 



A nearly complete skeleton of this same lizard is displayed in 

 the museum of the University of Iowa. This was a large specimen, 

 twenty-five feet in length, with the bones well bedded in the natural 

 chalk. 



The finest saurian ever found on any of the writer's expeditions 

 came from the Mendenhall pasture, on Hackberry creek, in Gove 

 county. The specimen was complete, except for the upper portion 

 of the head. The massive jaws are present, and the bones generally 

 are beautifully preserved, and so little distorted by pressure that 

 the specimen can be given an open mount. Even the breast- bone 

 and the cartilaginous ribs are present, this being the first time that 

 these bones have been found in the remains of this animal. This 

 fine specimen of Platecarpus coryphcBus was sent to the Roemer 

 Museum, at Hildersheim, near Hanover, Germany. 



The first restoration of a Platecarpus skoiQiorv ever attempted in 

 the United States, the material being from Kansas beds, was sent 

 to Doctor Krantz, a dealer of Bonn, Germany. With this went the 

 material for an open mount of the Kansas rhinoceros, Teleoceras 

 fossiger, from the Sternberg quarry, near Long Island, Kan. 



There has been sent to the Munich Museum a complete set of 

 lower jaws and also a number of inferior tusks of Mastodon pro- 

 ductus (Cope). 



The same museum possesses an unusual specimen of an ancient 

 shark, Oxyrhina mantelli, found on Hackberry creek, Gove county, 

 Kansas, in 1890. The remarkable thing about this specimen is 

 that the vertebral column, though of cartilaginous material, was 

 almost complete, and that the large number of 250 teeth were in 

 position. When Chas. R. Eastman, of Harvard, described this 



