RESTORATION OF DIADECTES 559 
limbs; the loosely knit splay feet, with their ill-developed terminal 
phalanges, all give an impression of a compact body lying close to 
the ground, and moving with a sprawling gait, much as in the turtles. 
The compactness of the body and the strong limb-bones led Cope to 
suggest that these animals were perhaps fossorial; but the character 
of the feet seems to preclude any such possibility. They must have 
been more like the great stegocephalians, but without their carniv- 
orous habits—lowly, sluggish, inoffensive herbivorous reptiles, clad 
in an armor of plate to protect them from the fiercely carnivorous 
pelycosaurs. 
