NO. 8 INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF THE CETACEA WINGE 57 



thinks that it can be nothing else than a piece of armor from the fore 

 angle of a dorsal fin, because the plates are bent toward each other 

 like a roof, in a manner and form that is not possible on any part of a 

 turtle's carapace. As a not unessential ground for believing in the 

 occurrence of armor in Zenglodon he reckons the occurrence in the 

 recent Delphinids Ncomeris and Phocana of structures which Kiiken- 

 thal explains as remnants of armor. 



At Radoboj in Croatia some remains have been found of a small 

 dolphin-like cetacean, Delphinopsis freyerii, established and de- 

 scribed by Joh. Miiller (Bericht fiber ein neu entdecktes Cetaceum 

 aus Radoboy, Delphinopsis Freyerii ; Sitzungsber. k. Akad. Wis- 

 sensch. Wien, math, naturwiss. CI., vol, lo, 1853, pp. 1-6 of separate), 

 and again fully discussed and figured by H. v. Meyer (Delphinopsis 

 Freyerii Miill. aus dem Tertiar-Gebilde von Radoboj in Croatien; 

 Palaeontographica, vol. 11, 1863, pp. 226-231, pi. 34) whose illustra- 

 tion is reproduced by Abel (/. c), who also has personally examined 

 the remains. It was only imperfect remains that were found, not 

 much more than pieces of a flipper lying in a slab of stone; around 

 the bones of the hand lie numerous small disk-shaped bodies a milli- 

 meter or less in diameter, the underside of which is covered with 

 minute projecting granules arranged in parallel lines. Joh. Miiller 

 seems to have left undecided the question whether these bodies were 

 of organic or inorganic origin, although he leaned mostly to the 

 opinion that they were osseous scales from the skin. But H. v. Meyer 

 maintained that they were inorganic. His reason for this opinion 

 was especially that scattered among them there lie bodies of entirely 

 similar appearance only without markings, and these bodies are 

 undoubtedly inorganic. Abel on the contrary is convinced that the 

 small, striated disks are dermal ossicles. 



In Neonicris, which lacks or as good as lacks the dorsal fin, the skin 

 of the back in the place where the fin is found in its relatives, and 

 also somewhat further forward and backward, is divided into small, 

 rather regularly placed plates, each bearing a small elevation. Similar 

 small knobs are found, though not always, in the nearly related genus 

 Phoccena, along the anterior surface of the dorsal fin and sometimes 

 also scattered in other regions. Kiikenthal, who has closely examined 

 these structures, thinks that they are a kind of scale, although they 

 have in their intimate formation only to a slight degree the characters 

 that are found in scales. The explanation given is that they are 



