240 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



For I was rewarded, as I have always in my life 

 been rewarded, for my many days of fruitless toil, 

 by the discovery of a long stretch of beds whose 

 brilliant metallic color, the result of a large amount 

 of iron accumulated by a dank and luxurious vegeta- 

 tion, testified that they had once formed the mud at 

 the bottom of a bayou. This old swamp proved to 

 have been the habitat of countless salamanders, and 

 thanks to this discovery I accomplished more during 

 the last month of my stay in Texas than during all 

 the rest of the time put together, leaving out of 

 account, of course, the fin-backed lizard. 



I take pleasure in showing my readers a splendid 

 skull (Fig. 34) after Broili, both the palatine and 

 superior exposures of one peculiar species of these 

 salamanders, to which Cope gave the name Diplo- 

 caulus magnicornis. The eyes are far down on the 

 face, but with a broad expanse of sculptured bone 

 behind, terminating in two long " horns," fourteen 

 inches across from tip to tip, which are merely the 

 greatly prolonged corners of the back of the skull. 

 There are three rows of minute teeth in the roof of 

 the mouth, and a couple of occipital condyles. The 

 vertebrae have a double row of spines down each side 

 of the median line, and the body is long and slender 

 with weak limbs. The head was the largest part of 

 the creature. This species was the most common of 

 all those which I discovered in the Permian beds. 



