Februaey 2, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



119- 



tinue to yield many facts of great morpholog- 

 ical interest. For example, the author holds 

 that the almost universally accepted view of 

 the origin of the sternum or breast-bone from 

 the fusion of the distal and ventral ends of 

 dorsal ribs in the mid-line is quite incorrect 

 and that the conditions in the early vertebrates 

 prove conclusively that the sternum has been 

 derived rather through the fusion of the " ven- 

 tral ribs," or gastralia, which were not carti- 

 laginous, but dermal bones, arranged orig- 

 inally in many rows of small rhomboidal ossi- 

 cles. 



Morphological interest is also predominant 

 in Mr. D. M. S. Watson's description* of the 

 brain-case in Eryops and other Permian types 

 which had an extremely low and primitive 

 type of brain and inner ear. New Permian 

 amphibians and reptiles of South Africa are 

 described in a series of papers from the Trans- 

 vaal MuseuiM by Dr. Van Hoepen,^ and from 

 the South African Museum by Mr. S. H. 

 Haughtou.'' The amphibians include most of 

 the groups found also in the Permian of ISTorth 

 America. Myriodon and Bhinesuchus, which 

 are allied to the American Eryops, are repre- 

 sented by nearly complete skeletons. 



Lieutenant R. Broom continues his descrip- 

 tion' of South African Triassie amphibian 

 specimens in the British Museum. He also 

 describes several new anomodont reptiles. 



Two thecodont reptiles of South Africa are 

 described, respectively, by Dr. Van Hoepen^ 

 and Mr. Haughton." Of these Sphenosuchus 

 is a primitive reptile remotely allied to the an- 

 cestors of the Phytosaurs, Dinosaurs and other 

 reptiles with two temporal arches. 



Several new Phytosaurs of the Trias of 

 Texas and adjoining states are described by 

 M. G. Mehl.^" Of these long-snouted, gaval- 



1 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. 35, pp. 611- 

 636. 



5 Ann. Transvaal Mus., Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 125- 

 149. 



e Ann. South African Mus., Vol. 12, p. 65. 



' Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1916, pp. 355-368. 



8 Ann. Transvaal Mus., Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 83. 



8 lUd., p. 98. 



10 Bull. Univ. OTclahoma, Ser. 5, pp. 5 and 26 ; 

 Jour. Geol., Vol. 23, No. 2, Feb.-March. 



like forms, Machceroprosopus and Angisti- 

 rhinus are represented by very good skulls. 

 The same author has discovered an ancestor 

 of the South American caiman in the Oligo- 

 cene of South Dakota.^^ 



Among the sauropod dinosaurs. Dr. Hol- 

 land^' has brieily described a new species, 

 Apatosarus louisce, discovered in the great 

 quarry near Jensen, Utah, from which the Car- 

 negie Museumi has recovered a very impor- 

 tant series of dinosaur skeletons. 



Mr. Bamum Brown continues his descrip- 

 tions^' of the varied dinosaur fauna of the 

 Cretaceous of Alberta, ' describing several new 

 types of duck-bill dinosaurs, one of which is 

 ancestral to the crested dinosaur Saurolophus. 

 The same author describes a remarkably well- 

 preserved skeleton of another crested dinosaur 

 which had a high skull crest resembling that 

 of a cassowary. Some notes on the marine 

 Triassie reptilian fauna of Spitzbergen are con- 

 tributed by Carl Wipian in a paper recently 

 published by the University of California.^* 

 [W. K. G.] 



Birds. — A preliminary notice of a nearly 

 complete skeleton of a gigantic fossil bird 

 allied to Diatryma from the Lower Eocene is 

 contributed by W. D. Matthew to the American 

 Museum Journal for ISTovember of this year. 

 It was a contemporary of the well-known 

 four-toed horse Eohippus and comes from the 

 same formation in Wyoming. It equalled the 

 moas of New Zealand in bulk, but had a gi- 

 gantic head with enormous compressed beak 

 like the South American fossil bird Bhoro- 

 rhaclws. A further description of this re- 

 markable creature, together with its probable 

 relations to other extinct avian groups, was 

 presented by Dr. Matthew and Mr. Granger 

 before the December meeting of the Paleonto- 

 logical Society. 



Dr. E. W. Shufeldt has reviewed our knowl- 

 edge of the primitive Eocene genus Gallinu- 

 loides, and describes a new anserine form, 



11 Jour. Geol., Vol. 24, No. 1, Jan.-Feb., p. 47. 



12 Ann. Carnegie Mus., Vol. 10, pp. 143-145. 



13 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Mist., Vol. 35, pp. 709- 

 716. lUd., pp. 701-708. 



i^Bull. Dept. Geol., Vol. 10, No. 5. 



