LAND ANIMALS OF THE COAL PERIOD. 359 



Baphetes planiccps^ Owen. 



In the summer of 1851, 1 had occasion to spend a day at the Albion 

 Mines ; and on arriving at the railway station in the afternoon, found 

 myself somewhat too early for the train. By way of improving the 

 time thus left on my hands, I betook myself to the examination of a 

 large pile of rubbish, consisting of shale and ironstone from one of the 

 pits, and in which I had previously found scales and teeth of fishes. 

 In the blocks of hard Carbonaceous shale and earthy coal, of which the 

 pile chiefly consisted, scales, teeth, and coprolites often appeared on 

 the weathered ends and surfaces as whitish spots. In looking for these, 

 I observed one of much greater size than usual, on the edge of a block, 

 and on splitting it open, found a large flattened skull, the cranial bones 

 of which remained entire on one side of the mass, while the palate and 

 teeth, in a more or less fragmentary state, came away with the other 

 half. Carefully trimming the larger specimen, and gathering all the 

 smaller fragments, I packed them up as safely as possible, and returned 

 from my little excursion much richer than I had hoped. 



The spechiien, on further examination, proved somewhat puzzling. 

 I supposed it to be, most probably, the head of a large ganoid fish ; 

 but it seemed different from anything of this kind with which I could 

 qompare it ; and at a distance from comparative anatomists, and 

 without sufFcIent means of determination, I dared not refer it to any- 

 thing higher in the animal scale. Hoping for further light, I packed 

 it up with some other specimens, and sent it to the Secretary of 

 the Geological Society of London, with an explanatory note as to 

 its geological position, and requesting that it might be submitted to 

 some competent osteologist for examination. For a year or two, how- 

 ever, it remained as quietly in the Society's collection as if in its 

 original bed in the coal-mine, until attention having been attracted to 

 such remains by the discoveries made by Sir Charles Lyell and myself 

 in 1852, at the South Joggins, and published in 1853,* the Secretary 

 or President of the Society rediscovered the specimen, and handed it 

 to Professor Owen, by whom it was described in December 1853,-|- under 

 the name of Baphetes planiceps, which may be interpreted the " flat- 

 headed-diving animal," in allusion to the flatness of the creature's 

 skull, and the possibility that it may have been iu the habit of diving. 



The parts preserved in my specimen are the bones of the anterior 

 and upper part of the skull in one fragment, and the teeth and palatal 

 bones in others (see Fig. 137, ante ; also Fig. 141). The teeth are 



* Journal of Geological Society of London, vol. ix. 



f Journal of Geological Society, vol. x. ; and additional notes, vol. xi. 



