166 Oeological Society. 



" On the discovery of a Fossil Scorpion in the British Coal- 

 measures." Bj Henry Woodward, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



The author commenced by noticing the various European and 

 American localities in which fossil Arachnida have been found in 

 the Coal-measures. Hitherto no true Scorpions have been recorded 

 from the English Coal-measures ; but in 1874 the author received 

 from Dr. D. II. llankin a specimen from the Coal-measures near 

 Carluke, which he regarded as the fossil abdominal segment of a 

 Scorpion ; in April last he obtained a fossil Scorpion from the Sand- 

 well-Park Colliery ; and in August Mr. E. Wilson forwarded to him 

 several specimens of similar nature in Clay-ironstone nodules from 

 Skegby Kew Colliery near Mansfield. The specimens are all very 

 imperfect ; but the author states that they most closely resemble an 

 Indian form which is probably Scorpio afer. He refers the English 

 species provisionally to the genus Euscorpiiis, Meek and Worthen, 

 and proposes to name it E. anglicus. 



November 17th, 1875. — John Evans, Esq., F.E..S., President, 

 in the Chair. 



•' On a new modification of Dinosaurian Vertebrae." Bv Prof. 

 Richard Owen, C.B., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. 



The peculiar modification of the Dinosaurian vertebra noticed by 

 the author occurs in Tapinoeeplmlus Atherstonii and Pareiasaurus 

 bomhidens. In the dorsal vertebrae of the former the centra are 

 nearly flat on both fore and hind surfaces, a structure to express 

 which the author proposes the terra " amphiplatyan." The 

 hind surface is very slightly the more concave. The middle of 

 each surface is pierced by a small foramen leading into a cylindrical 

 canal, first slightly expanding and then rapidly contracting to a 

 point, which meets the apex of the similar hollow cone coming from 

 the opposite surface. Similar characters were observed upon the 

 free surface of the anterior sacral and upon that of the posterior of 

 four anchylosed sacrals. 



The dorso -lumbar vertebrae of the Pareiasaurus had centra rela- 

 tively longer than those of Tapinocephalus. Their articular surface 

 is subundulate, convex along a fourth of the periphery, concave at 

 the centre, where there is an excavation corresponding to that in 

 Tapinocephalus, but with a relatively wider aperture, a rather more 

 constricted canal, a shorter terminal cone, and an interval of osseous 

 tissue separating the apices of the cones from the fore and hind 

 surfaces. In what is probably the first cervical vertebra of the 

 same Dinosaur, the centrum is so concave on both surfaces as to 

 become amphicoelian. 



In these unossified tracts of the middle of the centrum in the two 

 genera above-mentioned the author sees indications of a persistent 

 trace of the primitive " chorda dorsalis ;" and he calls attention to 

 the resemblance thus set up between these proliabh' Triassic Dino- 



