HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 7 



by Lyell and Dawson of the discovery of Amphibia in the Coal Measures of Nova 

 Scotia, so much interest was excited that the skull, now known as Baphetes plani- 

 ceps, was brought to light by the president or secretary and was described (509) 

 by Sir Richard Owen. The only other known evidences of land vertebrates in the 

 Paleozoic of North America, up to this time, had been the footprints described by 

 Lea and King from the Mississippian (Mauch Chunk) and Pennsylvanian of Penn- 

 sylvania. The specimens presented to the Geological Society of London by Lyell 

 and Dawson were found at the South Joggins, Nova Scotia, and consisted of scutes, 

 a few limb bones, a fragment of a jaw, and a few vertebrae, a part of which were 

 associated. The remains were found quite accidentally and unexpectedly by them in 

 the petrified trunks of ancient Sigillariae which were exposed on the coast. Dr. 

 Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard College, had examined these remains in the United 

 States and had pronounced (638) them to be amphibian, comparing them with 

 similar elements in Menobranchus. On the arrival of the specimens in England they 

 were submitted to Sir Richard Owen, who suggested the name (514) Dendrerpeton 

 acadianum and compared the remains with Archegosaurus. At the same meeting 

 of the London Geological Society, Owen read a paper on a small amphibian (508) 

 from the British Carboniferous which he named Parabatrachus. Subsequent dis- 

 coveries have shown, however, that this form belongs among the fishes. At 

 the meeting of the Geological Society held in the latter part of the same year Owen 

 announced (509) further discoveries in the Nova Scotia coal beds. 



Hermann von Meyer (436), in 1857, described numerous stegocephalian remains 

 from the upper Carboniferous of Germany. Dr. Jeffries Wyman, in the same year, 

 described (639) a new form of amphibian from Linton, Ohio. This form he called 

 Raniceps lyelli, but as the name Raniceps had been preoccupied by Cuvier for a 

 genus of gadid fishes, Wyman later (1868) changed the name to Pelion. This was 

 the first form to be described from the locality at Linton, which has since yielded 

 the remains of half a hundred species. 



Dawson (204), in 1859, made a further contribution to the fauna of Nova Scotia 

 by the description of Hylonomus and other species of Dendrerpeton from the South 

 Joggins deposits. Huxley (331), in 1862, described the genera Loxomma and Plioli- 

 dogaster from the Carboniferous of Scotland. The same year Owen made a further 

 contribution (514) to the fauna of the Nova Scotia beds, and Huxley (332) discussed 

 the anatomy of Anthracosaurns from Scotland. Marsh (404), in the next year, 

 described, as an enaliosaurian, the interesting Eosaurus acadianus from the Nova 

 Scotia Coal Measures, basing the species on two vertebrae, apparently from the 

 dorsal region. The vertebrae resemble the stereospondylous type, and Huxley (332) 

 called attention to the similarity of these vertebrae to those of Anthracosaurns. 



Cope (105), in 1865, began his researches among the Coal Measures Amphibia 

 of North America by the description of Amphibamus grandiceps from the Mazon 

 Creek shales of Illinois. Ten years later (123) he published a complete synopsis of 

 the Carboniferous Amphibia of North America, with especial reference to the Linton, 

 Ohio, species, illustrating many of the forms now known from Linton. Between the 

 years 1865 and 1897, Cope published numerous papers (105-177) on the Amphibia 



