PERMOCARBONIFEROUS AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES 67 



by the longer neck and longer, more prehensile legs, and usually 

 longer tails. 



The best known of all these is Dimetrodon, various good restora- 

 tions of which have been pubHshed. It was the largest of all the 

 well-known animals of the American Permocarboniferous, especially 

 characterized by its enormous crest, formed by the spines of its 

 vertebrae, probably bound together by the skin. The skull was 

 fiercely carnivorous in shape and in its teeth, and the largest species 

 must have measured ten feet in length, though the length of the 

 tail is not surely known. Our chief knowledge of the animal is due 

 to Professor Case. It was the Bengal tiger of the fauna. 



Fig. 9. — Varaiwsanrus hrevirostris, a pelycosaurian reptile, forty-four inches long. 

 From Texas. 



Unfortunately the reptile whose restoration is most often seen 

 in textbooks and popular works, as the most bizarre and the stran- 

 gest of the fauna, is one whose real form and habits are very different 

 from what they have been supposed to be. It has hitherto been 

 called Naosaurus but its real name is Edaphosaurus, since only 

 recently has its true skull, originally so named, been found con- 

 nected with the vertebrae and with its true legs. A restoration 

 of this strange animal will shortly be pubKshed by Professor Case. 



Definitely and positively we know nearly every detail of the 

 structure of the animal shown in Fig. 9, as Varanosaurus. The 

 mounted skeleton of this reptile in the museum of the University 



