STRATIGRAPHIC AND GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION. 17 



"Yellow Creek is not a village, but only a R. R. station (on the Pennsylvania R. R.), 

 and marks a spot where once was an active and prosperous mine. Probably at a former 

 day there was a small post-office somewhere in the neighborhood known as Linton. I did 

 not take any photographs, as I was not certain of the spot, or the mine, from which the 

 fossils had come. There are some cement mines within a few minutes' walk of the station, but 

 no coal appears to be mined at present at Yellow Creek. 'Smith's Pit,' the coal mine best 

 remembered by the younger men, is not worked. 



Now as to the question whether some of the Amphibia might have come from localities 

 in Columbiana County. I believe it very probable that they did. I walked along the road 

 from Yellow Creek (Jefferson County) to Wellsville (Columbiana County), a distance of 

 about 2 or 2.5 miles, and the country seemed quite the same. Everywhere one sees outcrops 

 of coal in the cuts along the road. Furthermore, I inclose a copy of a page in an old note- 

 book of Professor Newberry from which you will see that Coal Measure fossil localities were 

 known not only at Yellow Creek, but also from near Wellsville. There can be hardly a 

 doubt that most of the specimens you have are from Yellow Creek; and quite a number are 

 those collected by Sam Huston." 



Newberry says, in regard to the fauna of the Linton Coal: 



"The Linton locality is especially interesting and instructive. It has already (1889) 

 yielded more than 20 species of fishes and nearly 40 species of aquatic amphibians, all 

 inhabitants of the same body of water. These were found in a thin stratum of cannel which, 

 over a limited area, underlies a thick bed of cubical coal (No. 6 of the Ohio reports), of which 

 the place is near the top of the Lower Coal Measures. At Linton, ... we have evidence 

 that the great marsh in which the peat accumulated that formed coal No. 6 was for a time 

 a lake or a lagoon, inhabited by the fishes and amphibians to which I have referred. . . . 

 Many of the fishes and the amphibians were highly carnivorous and powerful, as we learn 

 from their teeth and coprolites. The largest of the amphibians must have Jpeen 8 or 10 

 feet in length, having strong jaws, set with numerous lancet-shaped teeth an inch or more 

 in length. . . . After a sufficient time had elapsed for many generations of fishes and 

 aquatic salamanders to live and die, the lake was filled by the extension of its peaty shores 

 into it just as so many lakelets are filled and obliterated at the present time and after- 

 ward over the cannel was formed a mass of peat, which has now become a stratum of 

 cubical coal 7 feet in thickness. 



' ' In the Linton cannel are buried fragments or entire individuals of all the inhabitants 

 of this body of water which had hard parts, bones, scales, spines, or teeth, capable of preser- 

 vation. Hence we get a locally complete picture of the life of the Carboniferous age, and we 

 find it to be unexpectedly rich and varied. In that age fishes and amphibians were the highest 

 forms of animal life, and the amphibians were comparatively newcomers on the earth's 

 surface. Yet they had multiplied and differentiated until this little pool contained millions 

 of them, varying in length from 6 inches to 10 feet and curiously diversified in their forms, 

 their scales, and spines, and in the ornamentation of their enamel-covered heads" (498). 



' ' To the paleontologist there are few places in the world more interesting than the Dia- 

 mond mine, at Linton, since here we get such a view of the life of the Carboniferous age as 

 is afforded almost nowhere else, and of the great numbers of species found there, not more 

 than three or four have been met with elsewhere" (497). 



On page 18 is a list of the Amphibia which are thus far described from the Lin- 

 ton deposits. They all belong, so far as known, to the Microsauria, the reference of 

 any of the species to other orders being doubtful. The larger Amphibia seem to be 

 indicated by a large rib which resembles very much that described by Huxley in 

 1863 for Anthracosaurus. 



