A NEW LABYRINTHODONT FROM THE I^NSAS COAL 



]\IEASURES. 



By Roy L. Moodie, 



Of the University of Kansas. 



The remains of labyriuthodoiits in the coal measures of North 

 America are very scanty. The specimens described from this horizon 

 can be counted ahnost on the fingers of one hand. 



The earliest discovery of labyrinthodont-hke remains was made by 

 Dawson, in 1850, in the coal measures of Nova Scotia. He secured 

 from the coal mines near Albion an incomplete skull, wliich he sent 

 to London, where it was described in 1854 by Sir Richard Owen as 

 Baphetes planiceps. Its relations with the typical labyrinthodonts 

 are somewhat uncertain, but it is more closely related to that group 

 than to any other, so far as we may judge from the material presei-ved. 



Hay^ places this form in his new suborder, Apoecospondyli and in 

 the family Dendrepetontidae. Hay includes also in this new sub- 

 order the Sauropleuridse, Archegosauridse, Cricotidse, Anthracosau- 

 ridje, Eryopidse, and Mastodonsauridse, which is a very heterogeneous 

 assemblage. Baphetes and Dendrerpeton may possibly belong in the 

 same family, but they are still too imperfectly known to be sure of 

 their relations. The Sauropleuridag are typical microsaurians. Two 

 ordere and three suborders are represented by the other families 

 included by Hay in his Apoecospondyli. 



The discovery of Baphetes was followed in 1863 by the finding of 

 typical labyrinthodont vertebrae in the coal measures of Nova Scotia, 

 unless it be that the species of Dendrerpeton prove to be labyrintho- 

 dont, in which case their discovery would precede that just mentioned. 

 The two vertebrae were described and named by Prof. O. C. Marsh, 

 at that time a student of Agassiz's and an enthusiastic collector of 

 minerals, as Eosaurus canadensis and the form was allied by him 

 with the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. The fallacy of this relation- 

 ship was shown by Huxley in his description of Anthracosaurus rus- 

 selli from the coal measures of Scotland,^ when he pointed out the 

 marked relations of the two forms as exliibited by their vertebral 

 structure. 



a Catalogue of Vertebrates, p. 418. 



b Quart. Journ. Gaol. Soc, vol. 19, 1863, p. 66, and also p. 52. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 39— No. 1 796. 



489 



