146 A Retrospect of Palwonfology for Forty Years. 



separate papers the discovery of new specimens of Dendrerpeton 

 acadianum and JTylonomus Dawsonl from the South Joggins Coalfield, 

 Nova Scotia. 



Our old friend William Davies gave an account (in 1876) of the 

 exhumation and working out of a large Dinosaurian, named by Owen 

 Omosaiirus armatus, from the Kimmeridge Clay of Swindon, Wilts. 

 This specimen is preserved in the Natural History Museum, Cromwell 

 Koad, and is a good example of the heavy vegetable-feeding land 

 reptiles of the Jurassic period. In 1880 he described the remains of 

 an Upper Miocene Ostrich from the Siwalik Hills, India. 



Professor Prestwich (1879) recorded the discovery of a species of 

 Iguanodon in the Kimmeridge Clay near Oxford. In the same year 

 E. T. Newton described J^iiiys Intaria from the fluviatile deposit 

 at Mundesley on the Norfolk coast ; an Iguanodont tooth from the 

 ' Totternhoe Stone ' at Hitchin ; " British Pleistocene Vertebrata 

 in Britain" (1891) ; and Dicynodontand other reptiles from the Elgin 

 Sandstone. He noticed the occurrence (1883) of the Red-throated 

 Diver, Cohjmhus septentrionalin, at Mundesley. 



W. II. Twelvetrees (1882) figured some Theriodont reptilian 

 teeth from the Permian of Russia ; this formation quite lately has 

 yielded a marvellous series of remains to Professor Amalitzky, of 

 Warsaw. Professor A. Liversidge gave (in 1880) an analysis of 

 Moa egg-shell from New Zealand. So long back as 1864 the 

 veteran anatomist, W. K. Parker, made some important remarks 

 on the skeleton of ArchcBopleryx. He pointed out that although this 

 primitive bird had, in the adult state, 21 caudal vertebrse, a recently 

 hatched duckling possesses 22 caudals if we count the fifth post- 

 femoral as the first of the caudal series ; so that, after all, this large 

 number of free caudals is only an embryonal chai'acter retained in 

 the adult. 



The late Professor O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, New Haven, 

 Connecticut, who died in 1899, was for 23 years a contributor to the 

 pages of this journal, and a very constant visitor to this country; 

 indeed, from his return after his student days in 1864 to the end of 

 his life he was a familiar figure in the British Museum and at the 

 meetings of our scientific societies. 



In 1876 Marsh contributed a paper on birds with teeth 

 (Odontornithes) from the Cretaceous of Kansas. The most interesting 

 is perhaps the Jlesperoruis regnlis, a gigantic diver. The brain was 

 quite small ; the maxillary bones, which were stout, liad throughout 

 their length a deep inferior groove thickly set with sharp pointed 

 teeth. The vertebra3 were like those of recent birds. The sternum 

 V7as without a keel, and the wings were quite rudimentary. It has, 

 in fact, been described as a swimming ostrich. In Ichthyornis the 

 teeth were in distinct sockets, the vertebras were biconcave ; the 

 sternum possessed a keel ; and the wings were well developed for 

 powerful flight. 



In 1881 Marsh wrote on the structure of the skeleton in the 

 Archceopteryx, and pointed out the many interesting features in which 

 this earliest known bird approaches to the reptilian type and 



