22O FOSSIL TURTLES OF NORTH AMERICA. 



The peripheral appears to be the second of the series. Its length is 1 1 6 mm.; its greatest 

 width, 66 mm.; and the thickness, 22 mm. This is reduced gradually to the acute hinder 

 border. The anterior border is obtuse. 



The length of the costal, omitting the portion of the rib projecting from the peripheral 

 border, is 220 mm. The width is 87 mm.; the thickness n mm. at the proximal end, 14 mm. 

 distally. Proximally the costal articulated with 3 peripherals, as we have found to be the case 

 with some of the costals of the Princeton specimen. The middle and smallest of these neurals 

 was crost by a sulcus which divided two vertebral scutes. This sulcus is 36 mm. long on the 

 costal, a fact that indicates that the vertebral scutes were not wide. 



The surface of the bone is smooth, but markt by vascular grooves. The distal border was 

 not articulated to the peripherals, except by gomphosis of the end of the rib. 



Genus CHELONIA Brongniart. 



Cheloniidae with persisting costo-peripheral fontanels; four pairs of costal scutes; jaws not 

 hookt; the grinding-surface of each maxilla with a prominent tuberculated ridge which 

 terminates in front in a sharp tooth and which does not extend on the narrow premaxilla. 

 Limbs each usually with a single claw. 



Type: Chelonia mydas (Linnaeus). 



To this genus there is assigned, with doubt, a single species of North American fossil 

 turtles. It is that called by Cope Puppigerus parvitectus. In the writer's Bibliography and 

 Catalogue, 1902, p. 443, this species and Leidy's Chelonia grandceva were catalogged under 

 the genus Puppigerus; and he would be glad to retain them there were it possible. In that 

 work it was stated that the type of Puppigerus was Leidy's Chelonia grandteva; but the fact 

 was overlookt that Mr. Richard Lydekker had, in 1889, chosen as the type of that genus Owen's 

 Chelone longiceps. According to Lydekker, Puppigerus becomes a synonym of Lytoloma Cope. 

 It is possible that such is the case; but it appears more probable that Puppigerus is a distinct 

 genus, with P. longiceps as its type. The writer can not believe that Leidy's C. grandceva 

 is congeneric with P. longiceps and he has for that reason proposed for C. grandxva the generic 

 name Procolpochelys. Furthermore it is improbable that parvitecta belongs in the same genus 

 as Leidy's grandceva. 



About the only reasons for placing the species parvitecta under Chelonia are that we thus 

 avoid erecting a new genus on extremely insufficient materials and that we return the species 

 to the genus to which it was originally referred, which genus is probably not far from the true 

 one yet to be estabhsht. 



On page 143 of the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy for 1867, Cope described 

 fragments of what he regarded as two species of Chelone; but he applied no specific names to 

 these. In the Miocene volume of the Maryland Geological Survey, 1904, page 63, Case has 

 copied Cope's descriptions. Case has also described and figured (op. cit., p. 64, plate xxvi, 

 fig. 5) the proximal portion of a scapula which he refers to an unnamed species of Chelone. 

 This, as well as Cope's specimens, was found in the Calvert formation of the Miocene. These 

 remains are not generically determinable. 



Chelonia? parvitecta Cope. 

 Plate 32, fig. 3. 



Chelone parvitecta, COPE, Ext. Batrach., Reptilia, Aves N. A., 1870, p. 155. 



Chelone parviscutum, COPE, Cook's Geol. New Jersey, 1868 (1869), p. 738. 



Chelone parviscutatus, COPE, Amer. Jour. Sci. (2), I, 1870, p. 138. 



Puppigerus? parviscutum, COPE, Ext. Batrach., Reptilia, Aves N. A., 1870, p. 235, 244. 



Puppigerus parvitecta, COPE, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1872, p. 15. 



Puppigerus parvitectus, HAY, Bibliog. and Cat. Foss. Vert. N. A., 1902, p. 443. 



The present species, whose specific name has been so greatly abused, has as its type a 

 single costal plate, which is now in the American Museum of Natural History and bears the 

 number 1318. It was found at Squankum, Monmouth County, New Jersey, and was supposed 

 by Cope to have come from the Miocene marl; but this is Lower Eocene. He reported having 

 found another costal in Charles County, Maryland. 



