56 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XIX, 



is somewhat distorted and crushed, and the greater part of 

 the shoulder girdle hidden. Above each orbit are two supra- 

 orbitals, one behind the other and each about 25 mm. wide. 

 There are remains of a supramaxilla, but its limits are not 

 definable. A portion of the palatine behind the malleolus 

 has been exposed in life. Below and behind the eye the 

 bones of the palatopterygoid arch have been wholly hidden 

 by the suborbitals. The boundaries between these latter 

 bones cannot be made out, the bones themselves having 

 probably been very thin. If correctly identified, the supra- 

 cleithrum is large, about 160 mm. long and 50 mm. or more 

 wide. The preopercular resembles that of Portheus. The 

 opercle is large. All the opercular bones are roughened, as 

 if there had been here and there bony nodules. The cleith- 

 rum appears to have a backwardly extending flap behind the 

 articulation of the jaw. 



The head of this specimen has been shortened by distortion, 

 but must have been, from snout to gill clefts, about 300 mm. 

 long. The length of the whole fish must have been about 

 5 feet (1.64 m.). 



The vertebrae of this species resemble those of Portheus. 

 In his description of these (Vert. Cret. Form. West, p. 207) 

 Cope states that the ribs are not articulated directly to the 

 centra, but by means of free elements which were inserted 

 into the lateral grooves. Had I been aware of this fact when 

 writing my observations on the vertebral column of Portheus 

 (Zool. Bull., II, 1898, pp. 25-54) I might have been saved 

 from the blunder which I there made, that of calling the 

 upper side of the vertebral column the lower. The sec- 

 tions of the column there studied had been crushed so 

 that the ribs of opposite sides had been brought into close 

 contact and so as to resemble neural arches. In Tarpon, 

 with which they were being compared, there are also free 

 parapophyses, but posteriorly these diminish and disap- 

 pear. In Portheus, on the contrary, as is now realized, 

 these parapophyses increase in size toward the tail region, 

 and the same is probably true in the cases of other members 

 of the family. 



