A CONTRIBUTION TO A MONOGRAPH OF THE EXTINCT 
AMPHIBIA OF NORTH AMERICA. NEW FORMS 
FROM THE CARBONIFEROUS 
ROY L. MOODIE 
The University of Chicago 
In the course of an extended investigation of the extinct Amphibia 
of North America the writer has studied several forms from the Car- 
boniferous which cannot be referred to any known species and 
they are here described as new. He has, so far, studied thirty-five 
species of the Carboniferous Amphibia of North America, all of which, 
with one or two exceptions, belong to the Branchiosauria and Micro- 
sauria. The Branchiosauria are represented by a single species. 
Of the Microsauria there has been an abundance of material available, 
thanks to the kind offices of Dr. Bashford Dean and Dr. Louis 
Hussakof of the American Museum, who very generously gave the 
writer the privilege of examining nearly a hundred of the specimens 
studied by Cope. There are already prepared some two hundred 
pages of manuscript and nearly sixty drawings toward the completion 
of a monograph of the extinct Amphibia of North America, but as 
the publication of this must be deferred until the remainder of the 
known North American and the European species have been studied, 
it is thought advisable to describe the following forms in advance, the 
more detailed treatment of the described forms being held for the 
monograph. 
The extinct Amphibia of the North American Paleozoic present a 
variety of forms, of very diverse organization. ‘The forms known 
range from very small creatures like Micrerpeton caudatum, less than 
two inches in length, to large forms like Eryops megacephalus Cope 
from the Permian of Texas, which probably attained a length of eight 
or ten feet. A rather interesting parallel can be drawn between the 
Paleozoic Amphibia and the reptiles of today. The snakes are repre- 
sented in the Paleozoic by the limbless, snake-like Amphibia, such 
as Ptyonius, Dolichosoma, Ophiderpeton and Molgophis of North 
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