RECENT PROGRESS AND TRENDS IN VERTEBRATE 

 PALEONTOLOGY 1 



By W. D. Matthew 



INTRODUCTION 



In science, as in our business and personal affairs, it is profitable 

 from time to time to look over the ground and see how much we have 

 accomplished in recent years. The present occasion would seem to be 

 a suitable one in which to render an account of recent progress in 

 that branch of paleontology with which I am principally acquainted. 

 It is not a catalogue of recent publications, nor a summary of their 

 contents that is presented in this address, but rather a report of 

 progress, with some suggestions as to where this progress seems to 

 be leading us. 



The foundations of paleontology, the documents on which our re- 

 searches are based, consist of the collections of fossils, which are our 

 record of the past history of life. The breadth and solidity of those 

 foundations must determine both the size and the permanence of the 

 structure that we may erect thereon. It is no small part of our duty 

 as architects thereof to examine carefully from time to time into the 

 adequacy of these foundations, to condemn and sweep away such 

 parts of our structure as appear to be insufficiently supported, flimsy, 

 or outworn. They may have served their purpose in the past as tem- 

 porary outworks, trial sketches or models, or provisional scaffolding 

 to aid in the erection of our more permanent structures; but they 

 should not be confused with solid and stable additions, nor should 

 they be allowed to outlive their usefulness. A critical review of our 

 foundations and of their recent extension is the foremost and most 

 important matter before us. 



In the early days of paleontology fossil vertebrates were known 

 from few and mostly very fragmentary specimens. Our concepts of 

 extinct animals were built up from the study and correlation of 

 numerous fragments, supplemented largely by the analogy of living 

 relatives of the extinct animals. The correlations were sometimes 

 incorrect, the analogies were always inexact and often misleading. 

 Of the theories and conclusions based by our predecessors on these 

 relatively scanty foundations, some have been swept away and for- 



1 Presidential address delivered before the Paleontological Society Dec. 29, 1922. 

 Reprinted by permission from the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. 34, 

 Sept. 30, 1923. 



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