314 Mr. A. S. Woodward on Pterosaur ians and 



XLI. — Evidence of the Occurrence of Pterosaurians and 

 Plesiosaurians in the Cretaceous of Brazil^ discovered hi/ 

 Joseph Maioson, Esq., F.G.S. By A. Smith Woodward, 

 F.G.S.* 



Three years ago the writer contributed to tlie ' Annals ' t a 

 series of brief notes on some vertebrate fossils from tlie 

 Province of Bahia, Brazil, collected and presented to the 

 British Museum hy Joseph Mawson, Esq., F.G.S., of the 

 Brazilian Central Railway. To tlie continued investigations 

 of the same generous donor the Museum is now indebted for 

 three additional series of specimens, ])artly referable to the 

 types already discovered, and partly adding to the known 

 fauna. All are more or less fragmentary, but the fossils in 

 the latter category are of interest as foreshadowing some of 

 the discoveries that may. eventually be expected from the 

 Brazilian Cretaceous formation ; and three of the bones 

 capable of ordinal determination extend so considerably the 

 known range of two extinct lieptilian groups, that they seem 

 worthy of being placed on record at once. Two of these 

 bones are examples of the articular end of a large Ptero- 

 saurian quadrate ; tlie third fossil is a Plesiosaurian propodial 

 bone. Each of the three specimens was met with in the 

 Cretaceous shale on the coast near Bahia, from which Mr. 

 ]\lawson has already obtained so many other vertebrate 

 lemains. 



I. Pterosaurian Quadrate. (Fig. 2.) 



The best example of the Pterosaurian quadrate bone is shown 

 of three halves the natural size from the postero-internai aspect 

 in the accompanying fig. 2, and the drawings above and below 

 (figs. 2 o, h) represent the fractured surface and tlie articular 

 face resjicctively. 1'lie element pertains to the left side and 

 exhibits the large internal facette (/') for the articulation of 

 the hinder jjterygoid lamina; while the postero-external 

 margin of the bone is acutely angulated. The ginglymoid 

 articular end displays its characteristic obliquity, and the 

 broken transverse section shows no trace of an internal cavity. 



The fossil thus described seems to be most nearly paralleled, 

 both in form and size, by a quadrate bone from the Kim- 



* Read before Section C, liritish Association, Carditi', ISSJl. 

 t Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. [(Jj vol. ii. (1888) pp. lo2- l-JO. 



