4H HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



gills, and cartilaginous occipital region ; and the Labyrin- 

 thodonti) comprising the younger Labyrinthodonts. Dawson 

 added a third order, the Microsauri^ whose remains occur in 

 the Carboniferous rocks of Nova Scotia, Ohio, and Illinois. A 

 few complete skeletons of Palaeozoic Amphibians from Ireland 

 were described by Huxley (1860-67), i n addition to different 

 Labyrinthodonts from deposits in Australia, South Africa, 

 and India. 



In the year 1869, E. D. Cope united all known Palaeozoic 

 and Mesozoic Amphibians under the name of Stegocephali^ 

 and added a fourth order, Xenorhachia^ characterised by soft 

 vertebrae. Miall, in 1873-74, made somewhat unsatisfactory 

 attempts to remodel the classification of the Amphibians. A 

 rich discovery of Amphibian remains in Bohemian and 

 Moravian Permo-Carboniferous deposits formed the subject of 

 an admirable monograph by A. Fritsch, wherein many new 

 genera are described in considerable anatomical detail. A few 

 years later, in the " Red Underlyer " horizon of the Permian 

 deposits at Niederhasslich, near Dresden, Hermann Credner 

 discovered a dolomitic bed with numerous Stegocephali in 

 excellent state of preservation. The examination of these 

 occupied many years; the results appeared between 1881 and 

 1893 in the Zeitschrift of the German Geological Society, and 

 considerably advanced the knowledge and the systematic treat- 

 ment of the group. From time to time material is found in a 

 good state of preservation, and the number of known species of 

 Palaeozoic Stegocephali found in Europe has steadily increased. 



In North America, also, new material is frequently found. 

 Cope's investigations of the remains of Stegocephali in the 

 Permian deposits of Texas induced him to propose a classifi- 

 cation based chiefly on the different characters of the vertebrae, 

 and many of his suggestions have been adopted in Zittel's and 

 Credner's classifications. New discoveries of Stegocephali 

 occur less frequently in the Mesozoic deposits. E. Fraas 

 published (1889) a monograph of the Swabian Triassic Laby- 

 rinthodonts, based on the excellent material in the museum at 

 Stuttgart, and R. Lydekker described various remains from 

 the Triassic deposits of India and South Africa. The fossil 

 Urodeles in Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits have been made 

 the subject of monographs by H. von Meyer, Goldfuss, Lartet, 

 Dollo, and others ; while Cope, H. von Meyer, Filhol, and 

 Woltersdorff have studied fossil Anura. 



