moodie: cretaceous fishes. 283 



tricated the skull for me from the matrix. It was a difficult 

 task and the results were hardly worth the efforts, for the 

 embedded portion was but little better preserved than the 

 outer. Enough of the skull is preserved, however, to show 

 many of the important characters. The head is naked; the 

 body compressed, but whether the ventral edge was drawn out 

 into a keel or not cannot be determined from the specimen. 

 The mandible is fully as long as the skull. The relations of the 

 articulation to the orbit cannot be determined, nor can the 

 position of these openings be definitely located. The parietal 

 bones are, apparently, small. Certainly the supraoccipital 

 projects forward as in ThHssopater magnus. Maxilla is 

 slender, with a single supramaxillary. The margin of the 

 jaws is provided with a single row of small, recurved, sharply 

 pointed teeth of uniform size throughout the length of the en- 

 tire mandible and maxilla. The quadrate is broadly V-shaped, 

 with a prominent articular surface. Nasal, ethmoid and pre- 

 maxillary bones ornamented with numerous small pits. The 

 same character occurs on the anterior end of the maxilla of 

 the right side. A single, squarish, punctate, thick, pharyngeal 

 bone is present. A very few branchiostegal rays are pre- 

 served; not over ten. From the relationships of the form we 

 would judge there were many in the complete fish. The oper- 

 cular apparatus is smooth. Posterior suborbital plate radiately 

 furrowed; its extent exceeding one-third of the length of the 

 skull; remaining elements indistinct. Greatest depth of the 

 body is slightly greater than the length of the skull from 

 premaxilla to supraoccipital. The length of the body is 

 possibly equal to four times the length of the skull. The fins 

 are relatively small. Dorsal fin median in position. The 

 pectoral fin has sixteen rays, which are cross-segmented but 

 are not divided longitudinally. The rays are supported by 

 five baseosts. The distance between the origins of the pectoral 

 and pelvic fins is equal to nearly four times the length of the 

 pectoral fin. The pelvic fins have nine rays, none of which 

 are cross-segmented. The pelvic bone is large and spatulate. 



The body scales are small, cycloid, deeply imbricated and 

 marked with fine concentric lines. There is a large, elongated 

 and elegantly sculptured scale at the base of the pectoral fin, 

 as in Tfuissopater salmoneus; though in the present instance 

 the scale is less than one-half the length of the pectoral fin 

 rays. The vertebrae are preserved to the number of thirty- 



2-Univ. Sci. Bull.. Vol. V, No. 15. 



