Febeuaet 21, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



311 



The executive committee consists of the 

 officers and the following gentlemen, who were 

 iilso elected: E. T. Allen, A. SeideU, E. A. 

 Hill and S. S. Voorhees. 



W. W. Skinner was appointed chairman of 

 the committee on communications. 



J. A. LeClerc, 



8ecretai-y 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



IS ALABAMOENIS A BIED ? 



A LITTLE more than a year ago Dr. Abel 

 published a brief paper, taking the ground 

 that the bones described by me in 1900 

 as the pelvic girdle of Zeuc/lodon were really 

 the coracoids of a gigantic bird, possibly al- 

 lied to Gastornis and, distantly, to Anthro- 

 pornis. In reviewing this paper I said that 

 it " seemed so clear and convincing that this 

 conclusion was at once accepted, . . . but it 

 became evident that if they (the bones) were 

 the coracoids of a bird, that bird was extraord- 

 inary, if not exceptional in many particu- 

 lars " ; it was therefore decided to say nothing 

 more until the bones could be reexamined. It 

 has been impossible for me to do this, but 

 Mr. C. W. Gilmore has kindly examined them 

 for me and corroborated my remembrance of 

 certain details. . It is rather difficult to dis- 

 cuss the question without figures, but a de- 

 scription of the bones taken by me for ossa 

 innominata must suffice foi- the present. One 

 is perfect, save for the loss cf a few millimeters 

 on one process ; the other has lost the posterior, 

 or proximal, end if it is a coracoid, but the 

 anterior end is perfect, which in this case is 

 an all-important fact. Close by the anterior 

 €nd is a good-sized cavity, precisely like an 

 acetabulum, and this is the only articular sur- 

 face present; what Dr. Abel considers the 

 glenoid fossa is simply a notch, not an ar- 

 ticulation. The length of the complete bone 

 is 245 mm., 9| in., and the bones are flattened, 

 but not crushed or distorted. 



If we adopt Dr. Abel's view that the bone 

 is a coracoid we are confronted with the fol- 

 lowing extraordinary conditions: the precora- 

 coid process is longer than the acrocoracoid, 

 Dr. Abel's processus furcularis, and the acro- 

 coracoid aborted, being reduced to a low. 



rounded mass of bone, without articular faces 

 of any kind. The articulation of the scapula 

 with the coracoid would be by means of a ball- 

 and-socket joint and, were a hvunerus present, 

 it would rest against the anterior end of the 

 coracoid, with nothing in advance of the 

 shoulder joint. Eor, it must be repeated, the 

 anterior end of the bone, be it pelvis or cor- 

 acoid, is absolutely complete, save a chip ofi 

 the point of the " precoracoid " ; it was never 

 any longer. Then, too, the proximal end of 

 the alleged coracoid is thin and narrow, where- 

 as the coracoid in all other birds, and particu- 

 larly in flightless birds, is expanded where it 

 articulates with the sternum. Finally the 

 texture of the bone is dense and not bird-like. 



If the bones are the coracoids of a bird they 

 represent a type of shoulder girdle entirely 

 different from any with which we are at pres- 

 ent acquainted, and the bird from which they 

 come not only belongs to a new species and 

 genus, but to a new order or superorder. 



There is not the slightest resemblance be- 

 tween the bone named by Dr. Abel Alabam- 

 ornis and the coracoid of Anthropornis which 

 is a perfectly normal avian coracoid; nor is 

 there any resemblance between it and the 

 coracoid of Gastornis, which is long and slen- 

 der, the only peculiarity being that it belongs 

 to a degenerate shoulder girdle and its char- 

 acters are not sharply defined. 



Dr. Abel's surmise that Diatryma and Ala- 

 bamornis may be one and the same is best 

 answered by noting that not only are the bones 

 separated by many hundred miles of space, 

 but that one comes from the Lower Eocene, 

 Wasatch, the other from the Upper Eocene, 

 Jacksonian. Now, I will not insist that the 

 bones under discussion represent the pelvis of 

 zeuglodon nor deny that they are the coracoids 

 of a bird; I will simply say that it seems to 

 me doubtful that this last ascription is cor- 

 rect and wait for further discoveries to throw 

 more light on the problem. F. A. Lucas 



CLADODUS COMPRESSUS, A CORRECTION 



In the Thirtieth Annual Eeport of the 

 Indiana Department of Geology and Natural 

 Eesources, page 1378, I named a new species 



