GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 385 



out any appreciable difference, varying from one-eighth to one-fourth of 

 an inch broad. The broadest of ours is just of the same size as the leaf 

 published in Sismonda's memoir, from the tertiary of Italy, as Cyperites 

 Deucalionis % Heer. It is evidently the same species. 



9. Fragments of leaves of a Sabal. The rachis is not seen, and there- 

 fore the species is not determinable. By the large divisions of its leaves, 

 it resembles Sabal major of common occurrence in the miocene. 



10. A sheath-bearing leaf of grass, undistinguishable from the One 

 figured by Heer in his tertiary flora, Tab. XXV, Fig. 10, and described 

 as Poacites Iwvis. 



From the small number of the above-mentioned species, it is not pos- 

 i sible to mark between both groups of plants a difference of stage in the 

 [ formations where they have been found. But it is evident that none of 

 these species indicates an older formation than that of the middle tertiary 

 / or miocene. All the Glumaceoe, species of Gar'ex, Cyperus, Arundo &c, 

 'have not been found as yet in formations older than the tertiary, and 

 our ferns of the group of Aspidium {Lastraia) as well as all the species 

 of Lygodium, are also characteristic of the miocene formation. There- 

 fore the group of these plants, taken in its whole, is evidently of tho 

 middle tertiary. 



The peculiar fades of these plants indicates their origin as from prairie 

 swamps, covered merely with grasses, ferns, and low palms. The fossil 

 remains do not show any traces of leaves of dicotyledonous trees, or of any 

 arborescent plant whatever. It is for the first time that this fades, so 

 often remarked in tertiary specimens of Europe, has been observed in 

 those of our country. 

 Columbus, Ohio, January 12, 1871. 



VI.— ON THE FOSSIL REPTILES AND FISHES OF 

 THE CRETACEOUS ROCKS OF KANSAS. 



By Prof. E. D. Cope. 

 EEPTILIA. 



The species of reptiles which have been found in the cretaceous strata 

 west of the Mississippi Biver up to the present time number fourteen. 

 Five of these pertain to the Sauropterygia, one to the Dinosauria, and 

 seven to the Pytlionomorplia. In the present report attention is confined 

 to the species discovered near the line of exploration of Dr. Hayden, or 

 that of the Kansas Pacific Bailroad, and that of Professor B. F. Mudge, 

 of the State Agricultural College. 



During the period when the cretaceous ocean extended from Eastern 

 Kansas over the present site of the Bocky Mountains, and from the 

 Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, it abounded in life. Among verte- 

 brata, fishes and marine reptiles chiefly abounded, and in varied forms. 

 Many of the reptiles were characterized by a size and strength exceed- 

 ing that seen in any other period of the world's history. The species of 

 Sauropterygia and Pytlionomorplia were all aquatic, but the two types 

 present very different adaptations to their mode of life. While the 

 former possessed two pairs of limbs, the latter appear to have possessed 

 an anterior pair only, or with the posterior pair so reduced as to have 

 been insignificant. They substituted for them an immensely long and 

 25 a 



