THE BROOM FOSSIL REPTILE COLLECTION 



By Henry Fairfield Osborn 



THE land life of Permian times in 

 South Africa brought to the 

 Museum by Dr. Robert Broom 

 and now acquired as a permanent pos- 

 session of the Museum, has interest 

 because of its vast antiquity and the 

 relationship which certain parts of this 

 life bear to the ancestry of the mammals, 

 the group of vertebrates to which man 

 belongs. These strange and archaic 

 forms of amphibians and reptiles, which 

 represent for the most part orders now 

 extinct, will be placed beside those of our 

 own American Permian from Texas 

 and New Mexico, acquired in the Cope 

 Collection many years ago through the 

 gift of Morris K. Jesup. 



The relationship between the Ameri- 

 can and African life has long been the 

 subject of debate among pahieontologists, 

 so that the opportunity afforded by the 

 acquisition of the Broom Collection to 

 bring side by side these extraordinary 

 animals from widely separated parts of 

 the most ancient world is an event of real 

 importance in palaeontology. We shall 

 now see the archaic and monstrous forms 

 of amphibians and reptiles of Permian 

 Africa arranged with those of Permian 

 Texas, showing the striking series of re- 

 semblances and contrasts through which 

 perhaps the question of relationship 

 may be solved. Dr. Broom thinks he 

 has detected some signs of affinity, 

 but in general the forms outwardly seem 

 very different. 



These strange animals of the Permian 

 continents first represent the climax of 

 development of the amphibian kingdom, 

 of which the puny modern representa- 

 tives are the frogs, toads and sala- 



manders. They are the first trials of 

 nature in progression on land. The 

 Texan reptiles continued to crawl close 

 to the ground but in South Africa we find 

 that in many of the groups through a 

 powerful development of the limbs the 

 body is raised well off the ground — a 

 distinct advantage which gave the start 

 that finally resulted in the evolution of 

 the running mammals. 



There are only three places in the 

 world where Permian land life has left 

 any records: South Africa, Texas and 

 New Mexico, and the borders of the 

 Dvina River in Russia. Strangely 

 enough the Russian life in Permian 

 times was closely related to that of 

 South Africa in the common presence of 

 many similar forms. It is true that here 

 and there in South America and in Great 

 Britain stragglers of the strange Permian 

 world are found, but both South Africa 

 and Texas present a wealth of forms. 



The Broom Collection adds fifty to 

 sixty types to the fifty-two types of 

 Permian reptiles already in the American 

 Museum. It is so rich in types that it 

 rivals the British Museum collection, 

 while from a spectacular point of view 

 it surpasses that collection as well as the 

 collection in the Cape Town Museum, for 

 apart from its types it has an unusually 

 large number of representative specimens 

 and these in unusually perfect condition. 

 It contains all the known specimens 

 except one of the group of primitive 

 mammal-like reptiles called the Dromo- 

 saurians; four skeletons of large Dino- 

 cephalians, a group which is known in 

 other great museums only by three 

 skulls in the Cape Town Museum and by 



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