Mr. A . S. Woodward on Scapanorhynchus. 487 



of the sockets. The notches found in tl)e species referred to 

 Saurodon show the earliest stag-es of this aii2:ration. 



The distinguished |)aU\3o-ichthyologist, Mr. A. S. Wood- 

 ward, has recently kindly called my attention to a su2:f?estion 

 made by Prof. E. D. Cope that the Saurocephalidaj are 

 closely related to the Chirocentridie, represented by tlie large 

 Chirocentnis dorab of the Chinese and Indian seas. I have 

 unfortunately had no opportunity to study a skeleton of 

 this fish ; but, judging from the figures of the fish found 

 in Cuvier and Valenciennes, pi. 565, and in Day's * Fishes 

 of India,' pi. clxvi. fig. o, its external appearance must be 

 much like that of the extinct Xiphactinus. Nevertheless, 

 we have no intimations that the teeth of ChirocentruH are 

 fixed to the jaws in any way different from those of ordinary 

 fishes. The fixation of the teeth in sockets is an unusual 

 thing among fishes ; and this character alone, it appears to 

 me, is sufficient to remove Xiphactinus and its allies from 

 the Chirocentridte, although not necessarily to a great 

 distance. I suspect that the Saurocephalidte will, when they 

 are better known, show distinctive characters in the vertebral 

 column also. 



LXVl. — Note on Scapanorhynchus, a Cretaceous Shark 

 apparently surviving in Japanese Seas. By A. Smith 

 WOODWAKD, F.L.S. 



In his paper on the Cretaceous fishes from Mount Lebanon 

 published twelve years ago ^, the late James W. Davis gave 

 an unsatisfactory description and figure of a remarkable new 

 shark under the preoccupied generic name of Rhinognathus. 

 He pointed out some of its principal characters, and, notwith- 

 standing the demonstrated presence of an anal fin, placed the 

 fish in the family Spinacidffi. In 1889 f, after a detailed 

 study of the fine series of specimens in the British Museum, 

 the present writer published an amended, definition of the 

 genus under the new name of Scapanorhy nchus, placing it in 

 tlie family Lamnidre close to the well-known existing genus 

 Odontaspis. The dentition was shown to be identical with 

 that of the latter genus ; but other characters, such as the 

 slenderness of the fish, the peculiar elongation of the rostrum, 



* J. W. Davis, " On the Fossil Fishes of the Chalk of Moiiut Lebauon, 

 in Syria," Trans. Roy. Dublin Soc. [2] vol. iii. (,l887j, p. 460, pi. xiv. 

 fig. 4. 



t A. S. Woodward, ' Catalogue of Fossil Fishes in the British 

 Museum/ part i. (1889), p.. 351. 



