REPTILIA 283 



Remains of land-tortoises (Testudo, Brong.) indicate several 

 extinct species in the miocene and pliocene formations of 

 continental Europe. Strata of like age in the Sewalik Hills 

 have revealed the carapace of a tortoise 20 feet in length ; it 

 is called by its discoverers, Cautley and Falconer, Golossochelys 

 atlas. The same locality has also afforded the interesting 

 evidence of a species of Emys (E. tectum, Gray) having con- 

 tinued to exist from the (probably miocene) period of the 

 Sic i titer it' m to the present day. 



Order XIII. — Batrachia. 

 (Toads, Frogs, Newts.) 



Char. — Vertebras biconcave {Siren), proccelian (Ra/naY or 

 opisthoccelian (PijpaS : pleurapophyses short, straight. 

 Two occipital condyles ; two vomerine bones, in most 

 dentigerous : no scales or scutes. Larvae with gills, in 

 most deciduous. 



It is only in tertiary and post-tertiary strata that extinct 

 species, referable to still existing genera or families of this 

 order, have been found. The reptiles with amphibian or 

 batrachian characters, of the carboniferous and triassic periods, 

 combined those characters with others which gave them dis- 

 tinctions of ordinal value ; they illustrated, indeed, rather a 

 retention of the more general cold-blooded vertebrate type, 

 with concomitant piscine and saurian features, than any near 

 affinity with the more specially modified naked or soft-skinned 

 reptiles to which the name Batrachia is given in zoological 

 catalogues of existing species. 



Of the tailless or "anourous'' Batrachia, toads of extinct 

 species (Palceophrynos Gessncri and P. dissimilis) have been 

 discovered in the GEningen beds ; and frogs, more abundantly, 

 in both miocene and pliocene deposits of France and Germany. 

 The batracholites from the tertiary lignites of the "Siebenge- 



