PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SUBORDER 

 OF PHYTOSAURIAN REPTILES WITH A DESCRIP- 

 TION OF A NEW SPECIES OF PHYTOSAURUS 



E. C. CASE 

 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 



The Triassic beds exposed in a narrow strip along the eastern 

 edge of the Staked Plains in western Texas have not been inten- 

 sively studied and are now grouped together under the name given 

 by Drake, the Dockum beds. Drake recognized an indefinite 

 tripartite division of the beds which may later be distinguished as 

 recognizable horizons. The vertebrate remains which have so 

 far been recovered from these exposures are all members of the 

 reptilian order Parasuchia and of the stereospondylus stegocephalia 

 and are indicative of an upper Triassic age. . Summary accounts of 

 the reptilian forms previously described have been given by 

 McGregor and Mehl." 



In the year 191 7 the author, while on a hurried trip across the 

 plains, found near the now Httle used crossing of the Blanco or 

 Catfish River on the road from Spur, in Dickens County to 

 Crosbytown, in Crosby County, a series of vertebrae, with portions 

 of the dorsal armor, of a reptile which appeared to be of the usual 

 phytosaurian type and were referred, in the museum catalogue, 

 to Phytosaurus buceros Cope with question. In 1919 a chance 

 was afforded to revisit the locality and considerably more of the 

 same specimen was recovered. The material now in hand includes 

 most of the vertebral column with exception of the posterior part 

 of the tail, much of the dorsal armor and the skull, lacking the 

 anterior end of the nose and the lower jaws. The skeleton was 

 found in a sandy clay mixed with abundant fragments of vegetation 

 and the bones were coated with a tough layer of gypsum which has 

 in places penetrated and rotted the bones and in other places left 



I J. H. McGregor, Me)7t. Am. Miis. Nat. Hist., Vol. IX, Part XI, 1906; M. G. 

 Mehl, Jour. GeoL, Vol. XXIII (1915), p. 129. 



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