‘THE 
GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 
NEW SERIES. | DECADE I) VOL. VI. 
No. I—JANUARY, 1889. 
Oil E GEE NPA Nh A Fel BCE Ss 
—— 
I.—Howuosrzvs, ASMUSS, COMPARED witH CoccosTzus, AGASSIZ. 
By Dr. R. H. Traquair, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
(PLATE I.) 
HE creature which forms the subject of the present communica- 
tion is the same as that which was described as Asterolepis by 
Hugh Miller in his “‘ Footprints of the Creator,” and consequently its 
remains are at present better known to British geologists and 
paleontologists under that name. Why, then, alter a name which 
we have used so long ? is a question likely to be asked by those who 
have not critically studied the complicated mesh in which the 
Synonymy of the name “ Asterolepis”’ is entangled. 
The genus Asterolepis was proposed by Hichwald in 1840! for 
fragmentary remains of the exoskeleton of a vertebrate organism, 
from the Russian Devonian rocks, allied to Pterichthys, Ag. To 
these remains Agassiz also applied the name Chelonichthys, which he 
subsequently withdrew in favour of As/erolepis as having priority ; 
and with them he also identified generically certain large bones and 
plates from the Lower Old Red of Dorpat, some of which were first 
figured by Kutorga® as “Trionyx” and “ Ichthyosauroides,” and of 
which a considerable number, collected by Asmuss, were reproduced 
in plaster and copies sent to Agassiz. A number of these casts were 
figured by Agassiz,° as of bones of “ Asterolepis,” some of which are 
generically identical with the creature of whose bones and cranial 
buckler many fine specimens from Thurso, largely collected by 
Robert Dick, came into the possession of Hugh Miller. And thus 
it was that these remains came to be figured by Hugh Miller as 
belonging to Asterolepis, although they had no affinity to the 
creature to which Hichwald originally gave that name, their identi- 
fication with which being entirely due to a mistake of Agassiz, 
misled as he was by their mere external sculpture, consisting of 
small tubercles with stellate bases. 
For, that “ Asterolepis” cannot be applied to any of the remains 
from Dorpat represented by these casts, is unconsciously shown by 
* Die Thier- und Pflanzenreste den alter rothen Sandsteins und Bergkalks in 
Nowgorodschen Gouvernement,” Bull. Acad. Imp. St. Pétersburg, tome vii. p. 78. 
 Beitrage zur Geognosie und Palaeontologie Dorpats, 1835-37. 
3 Poiss. Foss. du vieux Grés rouge, tab, xxxii. 
DECADE III.—VOL. VI.—NO. I. 1 
