104 CHELONE. 
CHELONTA. 
Remains of Turtles are not unfrequently discovered in the Green-sand formations 
of the United States, and many have been submitted to my inspection, especially 
from New Jersey. So little care, however, has been taken of these fossils, at the 
time of their discovery, that the fragments I have seen are scarcely more than suffi- 
cient to determine the order of animals to which they belong. Indeed, it has 
appeared to me that on the discovery of one or more of the plates which compose 
the shell or carapace and sternum of a Turtle the finder has amused himself in 
breaking the plates into as many bits as possible, though probably the destruction 
has rather been owing to the accidental blow of a pick or spade in digging the 
Mar! in which the bones were imbedded. Most of the best preserved specimens I 
have had the opportunity of examining were obtained by Prof. George H. Cook, 
during his geological survey of New Jersey. 
CHELONE. 
Chelone sopita. 
The remains of a supposed species of Chelone, from the Green-sand of Tinton 
Falls, Monmouth County, New Jersey, obtained by Prof. Cook, were first mentioned 
in a paragraph following a notice of remains of Chelone grandeva, a species of the 
Miocene period, in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 
delphia, Vol. VIII, page 303. 
These remain’ consist of portions of four detached marginal plates of the cara- 
pace, which differ so much in breadth as to lead to the supposition that they may 
belong to two individuals of different age, if not to two species, though I suspect 
they really appertain to a single individual. 
The plates are smooth, except that they present distinct vascular grooves, and 
each is crossed transversely about the middle by a furrow defining the separation 
of the marginal scutes. Their inner border is thick and longitudinally grooved, 
and is provided with a deep conical pit for the reception of a rib process from the 
costal plates. From the inner border the plates gradually and uniformly thin out 
to the acute outer edge. The upper surface is straight longitudinally, but slightly 
concave transversely, and the under surface is in the same degree convex. The 
transverse section forms a narrow isosceles triangle slightly curved. 
One of the plates has a length of about three inches and a half, a breadth of 
three inches and a quarter, and a thickness at the inner border of seven lines. The 
fragment of a second plate, more curved than the others, has a breadth of three 
inches and a quarter, and a thickness at the inner border of 11 lines. A third 
plate is four inches and a half long, two inches and a half wide, and three-quarters 
of an inch thick at the inner border. The fragment of a fourth plate, less curved 
than the others, is two inches wide, and one inch thick at the inner border. 
