PALEONTOLOGY 



PALjEONTOLOGICAL interest, so far at least as vertebrated 

 animals are concerned, is concentrated in Warwickshire on the 

 remains of fishes, amphibians and reptiles from the Keuper 

 division of the Trias, of which a splendid series are preserved 

 in the museum at Warwick. Coten (or Colon) End, near Warwick, 

 Shrewley, Cubbington and Leamington are well known localities for 

 these fossils, many of which are peculiar to the county, while the others 

 are restricted to a few localities in Britain. The amphibian remains 

 belong to that early group known as labyrinthodonts, the more typical 

 representatives of which are characterized by the peculiar and compli- 

 cated infoldings of the outer layer of the crowns of their teeth, whereby 

 a characteristic pattern is produced in the interior which is best dis- 

 played in transverse section. The bones of the head, as well as those 

 forming the chest-shield of these lowly creatures, are also characterized by 

 a distinctive sculpture, recalling that on the skulls and scutes of modern 

 crocodiles. The Warwick Museum is especially rich in the remains of 

 these labyrinthodonts, which have been described by Huxley, Miall, 

 Owen and others. Among the collectors of Warwickshire Triassic 

 vertebrates may be especially mentioned the late Rev. P. B. Brodie, who 

 published two papers in the Quarterly ^Journal of the Geological Society * on 

 the fish and other remains from Shrewley and other localities. Com- 

 mencing with the fish remains from the Keuper, the first form to be 

 noticed is a shark originally described in 1840 by Murchison and 

 Strickland on the evidence of teeth from Pendock in Worcestershire as 

 Hybodus keuperinuS) but assigned in the British Museum Catalogue of 

 Fossil Fishes 2 to the genus Acrodus, Similar teeth occur at Shrewley 

 and Rowington. From the evidence of a hybodont spine from Shrewley, 

 which may belong to the same form, Dr. A. S. Woodward 3 has recently 

 expressed the opinion that this fish may have to be assigned to a distinct 

 genus, under the name of Liacantbus. Of special interest is a much more 

 primitive type of shark, belonging to the Palaeozoic group Ichthyotomi, 

 described by Dr. Woodward 4 on the evidence of teeth obtained by 

 Mr. Brodie from Shrewley under the name of Phcebodus brodiei. Another 

 tooth is known from the Worcestershire Keuper. 6 From the Keuper 



1 Vol. xliii. 540 (1887), and xlix. 171 (1893). 2 Part i. p. 281. 

 3 Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 6, xii. 283 (1893). 4 Op. cit. 



6 In the ' Palaeontology ' of Worcestershire it is stated that only two teeth are known. 



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