362 A. 8S. Woodward—The Malton Museum. 
The Upper Lias of Whitby is represented to a considerable extent; 
but the later Jurassic formations occurring in the immediate vicinity 
of Malton naturally claim the largest series of specimens. In addition 
to the Corallian Mollusca and some Echinodermata and Crustacea, a 
few Sponges have lately been discovered upon this horizon by Mr. 
Chadwick, and are now being investigated by Dr. G. J. Hinde; and 
both Reptiles and Fishes are represented by numerous teeth and 
spines. The Yorkshire Chalk has also yielded a large number of 
specimens—the collection of Sponges from Flamborough being, 
indeed, enormous. 
Such a collection necessarily affords much of interest to the 
specialist, and the present writer’s notes, made during a recent 
visit under the guidance of Mr. Chadwick, relate exclusively to 
the Fossil Vertebrata. , 
Among the fossils of the Whitby Lias, in addition to remains of 
the ordinary Reptiles, there are numerous portions of the gigantic 
Acipenseroid Fish, Gyrosteus, displaying some of its characteristic 
features, as lately described in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ 
Association. A detached fin, probably of Gyrosteus, showing a sparse 
investment of dermal prickles, seems to be unique; and two portions 
of the tail exhibit the characters of the caudal scutes, previously 
only observed in a specimen in the York Museum. Both the fin 
and the caudal scutes differ in little except size from the correspond- 
ing parts of Chondrosteus met with in the Lower Lias of Lyme Regis ; 
but the more important structural features of the Whitby fish seem 
to demonstrate its distinctness from the latter genus. 
In the Corallian beds of Malton Reptiles are only represented by 
detached teeth and imperfectly preserved bones, chiefly Plesiosaurian 
and Pliosaurian. Fishes, moreover, occur in an equally fragmentary 
state, but are somewhat more varied and abundant. Among these 
the fine series of teeth of Hybodus obtusus described by Mr. H. M. 
Platnauer,' is conspicuous ; and there can be no doubt as to the cor- 
rectness of the specific identification. A characteristic dorsal fin- 
spine of Asteracanthus ornatissimus has already been noticed by Mr. 
Chadwick ;* and it is interesting to find, upon the same horizon as 
this fossil, portions of the large cephalic spines well known to occur 
with remains of Asteracanthus in the Oxford Clay near Peterborough.® 
No Strophodus-shaped teeth, however, have as yet been discovered at 
Malton. Several slender, pointed Selachian teeth are exactly of the 
form long ago described by Agassiz, under the preoccupied name of 
Sphenodus,* from the Jurassic rocks of the Continent; and no fossils 
of this character have hitherto been recorded from British strata. 
There is also an Ichthyodorulite indistingnishable from the dorsal 
fin-spine of the existing Cestracion—a genus believed to occur fossil 
in the Lithographic Stone of Bavaria, and the possible discovery of 
the teeth of this Shark in the Yorkshire Corallian will be awaited 
* Ann. Report Yorksh. Phil. Soc. 1887, p. 35, pl. i. figs. 1-16. 
* Third Annual Report Malton Field Nat. and Sci. Soc. 1885-86, p. 6. 
° Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. [6] vol. ii. p. 340, pl. xii. figs. 7-8. 
* Orthacodus, A. S. Woodward, Catal. Foss. Fishes Brit. Mus. pt. i. (1889), p. 349. 
