FOSSIL FISHES. 75 
lay near the surface and was so much decomposed that it supplied little 
information, except as regards size; it was about three feet in length. 
The description of the genus and species published in the Annals of 
the New York Academy of Sciences was taken from the Boonton specimens, 
and, from their imperfect preservation, was in some respects erroneous. 
One of the specimens obtained at Durham, though wanting the muzzle and 
having the tail much decomposed, exhibits in other respects the beautiful 
preservation characteristic of the Durham fishes. This shows the orna- 
mentation of the scales copied on Pl. XX, Figs. 3-5, and spines on the fin 
rays. Another quite imperfect specimen found at Durham was flattened 
vertically, and shows a broad rounded head like that of a salamander, but 
this outline is doubtless due to compression. Four out of the five specimens 
of Diplurus known were found lying on the side, from which we may infer 
that like most fishes it was broader vertically than transversely, and that 
the rounded head of the specimen referred to above was the result of an 
unnatural position accidentally assumed. 
It is somewhat surprising that no distinct teeth can be discerned in 
any of the heads of Diplurus yet found, though some impressions at the 
extremities of the mandibles of one of the Boonton specimens indicate but 
do not prove that the teeth were conical and acute. This is the character 
of the teeth of Celacanthus and Macropoma, and it is probable that Diplurus 
was the enemy and devourer of the many species of smaller ganoids with 
which it was associated. Numerous large coprolites are found in the same 
beds, and it would seem natural to refer them to Diplurus, but it is some-- 
what remarkable that none of these coprolites have yet shown any traces 
of bones or scales such as we might expect to find in the exereta of fishes 
which lived on ganoids. 
In the absence of teeth we can not certainly determine whether Diplurus 
was carnivorous or herbivorous. The coprolites referred to afford good 
evidence that the Triassic estuaries contained in considerable numbers a 
large fish which did not feed on the various scaled ganoids that abounded 
in the same waters. On the other hand, it should be said that the head 
bones of Diplurus, including cranium, opercula, maxillaries, and mandibles, 
were all well ossified, much more so indeed than those of Catopterus or 
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