VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY 239 



research while with Marsh, owing to the latter 's disin- 

 clination to foster such work on the part of his associates. 

 Williston began his publications in 1878 and has con- 

 tinued them until the present, working mainly with Cre- 

 taceous mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterodactyls. Of 

 late, since his transference to the University of Chicago, 

 where as professor of paleontology and director of the 

 Walker Museum he has served since 1902, his interest has 

 lain mainly among the Paleozoic reptiles and amphibia. 

 Williston 's more notable works are American Permian 

 Vertebrates and Water Reptiles of the Past and Present, 

 wherein he sets forth his views of the phylogenesis and 

 taxonomy of the reptilian class. He is at present at 

 work on the evolution of the reptiles, a volume which is 

 eagerly awaited by his colleagues. It is in morphology 

 that Williston 's greatest strength lies and some of 

 his most effective work on the mosasaurs has appeared 

 in the Journal. 



1880-1900. 



The next decade, that of 1880-1890, saw a number of 

 notable additions to the workers in vertebrate paleontol- 

 ogy : Henry F. Osborn, W. B. Scott, R. W. Shufeldt, J. L. 

 Wortman, George Baur, F. A. Lucas, and F. W. True. 

 Shufeldt is our highest authority on the osteology of 

 birds, both recent and extinct, having recently described 

 all of the extinct forms contained in the Marsh collec- 

 tion ; True wrote of Cetacea ; Lucas of marine and Pleis- 

 tocene mammals and birds, and has also written popular 

 books on prehistoric life. Lucas 's greatest service, how- 

 ever, lies in the museums, where he has manifested a 

 genius second to none in the installation of mute evi- 

 dences of living and past organisms. Wortman was for 

 a time associated with Cope, later with Osborn in the 

 American Museum, again at the Carnegie Museum at 

 Pittsburgh, and finally at Yale in research on the Bridger 

 Eocene portion of the Marsh collection. His work has 

 been chiefly the perfection of field methods in vertebrate 

 paleontology, and as a special investigator of Tertiary 

 Mammalia, treating the latter largely from the morpho- 

 logic and taxonomic standpoints. Wortman 's Yale 

 results on the carnivores and primates of the Eocene, 



