Apeil 21, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



563 



vious to the publication of any of liis West- 

 ern material he contributed some important 

 papers upon the fossil birds and reptiles 

 from the Cretaceous of the East. In 1869 

 appeared ' Notice of some New Mosaaauroid 

 Reptiles from the Greensand of New Jer- 

 sey,' ' Description of a New Gigantic Fossil 

 Serpent (^Diiwphh grandis') from the Ter- 

 tiary of New Jersey ' and ' Notice of some 

 Fossil Birds from the Cretaceous and Ter- 

 tiary Formations of the United States. ' In 

 1871 he gave a description of his trip 

 through the Uinta Mountains and the Dis- 

 covery of the Uinta Tertiary Formation, 

 the uppermost member of the Eocene series. 

 In May of this year he published a desci'ip- 

 tion of some new fossil serpents from the 

 Tertiary deposits of Wyoming, and in June 

 of the same year he gave notice of the dis- 

 covery of the first remains of Pterodactyles 

 that had ever been found in America. In 

 July of the same year he also published the 

 first notice of Tertiary Mammals from the 

 Western beds. In the following year, 1872, 

 he was very active, and some of the most 

 important discoveries of the long list to his 

 credit followed in rapid succession. 



It is quite impossible to give more than a 

 brief list of his remarkable finds published 

 during this and the succeeding years ; the 

 more important only must suffice. It ap- 

 pears astonishing, however, in the light of 

 our present knowledge of the subject what 

 a keen insight into their meaning and im- 

 portance he possessed and of which he gave 

 such distinctive evidence in his descriptions. 

 In this year (1872) he proved beyond all 

 doubt the existence of the Pterodactyles in 

 this country, a group which hitherto had been 

 regarded as entirely wanting in the western 

 hemisphere ; he described the first remains 

 of the now famous toothed bird Hesperornis, 

 although at this time. May, 1872, he did not 

 know of its having possessed, teeth. Among 

 the Mosasauroid Reptiles he determined for 

 the first time the following important points 



in their structure: (1) position of the 

 quadrate bone, (2) pi-esence of the stapes, 

 (3) presence of the collumella, (4) presence 

 of the quadratoparietal arch, (5) presence 

 of the malar arch, (6) the nature of the 

 pterotic bone, (7) nature of the anterior 

 limbs, (8) presence and nature of the pos- 

 terior limbs and pelvis and (9) the number 

 of the cervical vertebrte. He also an- 

 nounced in September of this year the dis- 

 covery of Ichthyornis, the curious Cretaceous 

 bird with biconcave vertebree. Just pre- 

 vious to this came a long list of new genera 

 and species of fossil mammalia from the 

 Bridger Eocene horizon of Wyoming, which, 

 although briefly described, are of the most 

 intense interest and the highest importance 

 in tracing the ancestrj' of many living 

 mammalian groups. One of the most im- 

 portant of these discoveries among the fossil 

 mammals was the demonstration of the ex- 

 istence of Lemurs, or Primitive Primates, on 

 this continent. 



Of scarcely less imjyortance were his con- 

 tributions of the following year ; early in 

 February, 1873, he announced the discov- 

 ery of teeth, in both jaws, of Ichthyornis 

 dispar and established for it, on this account, 

 a sub class, Odontornithes. This discovery 

 was of far-reaching importance and satis- 

 factorily established the fact that many of 

 the Cretaceous birds are transitional be- 

 tween living birds and reptiles. In this 

 year he devoted much time and space to the 

 consideration of the gigantic mammals of 

 the Eocene, of which the first notices had 

 been given by Leidy from a few fragmen- 

 tary i-emains. To Marsh, however, belongs 

 the credit of the final determination of their 

 structure and affinities ; he classified them, 

 in a separate and distinct order, Dinocerata, 

 a name which has been very widely adopted 

 by naturalists. 



In March, 1874, came the discovery which 

 has tended to give Professor Marsh a greater 

 reputation than any other single piece of 



