XOVEMBEH 27, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



701 



matia, show a strong relationship to the living 

 monitor lizards, ditfering from them only in 

 those adaptive features in which they ap- 

 proach the Mosasaurs. Still farther back he 

 hjljothccates a terrestrial Jurassic tyiie, of 

 which the Cretaceous Mosasaurs and recent 

 Monitors are the offspring. The author was 

 not aware that Dr. Louis Dollo,* of Brussels, 

 had already presented a similar theory in 

 1892 — apparently another case of independent 

 discovery. Baron Nopcsa has presented also 

 recently a number of interesting memoirs upon 

 the Iguanodontia. 



Plesiosaurs. — After having exhaustively 

 studied the North American Mosasaurs, Pro- 

 fessor S. W. 'Williston has begun to mono- 

 graph the Xorth American Plesiosaurs, his 

 first complete paper, ' North American Plesio- 

 saurs, Part I.,' appearing from the Field Co- 

 lumbian Museum last April. This part is 

 devoted first to an exhaustive description of 

 the remarkably preserved type Dolichnihyn- 

 chops oshorni discovered by Sternberg in the 

 chalk of Logan County, Kansas, and now 

 mounted in the museum of Kansas Univer- 

 sity. Its most distinctive feature is the great 

 elongation of the snout correlated with a rela- 

 tively abbreviated neck. The author finds 

 that the Plesiosaurs, like the Mosasaurs, were 

 divided into a number of independent but 

 contemporaneous phyletic series, the distinc- 

 tive characters of which are chiefly found in 

 the structure of the shoulder girdle, in the 

 proportions of the neck and of the skull. All 

 the Plesiosaur materials in the American 

 Museum of Natural History have been placed 

 at the author's disposal for study, and the 

 Carnegie Institution has made a special grant 

 for the continuation of this research. 



JURASSIC REPTILES. 



Compsognatha. — Franz v. Nopcsaf has re- 

 studied the tyi^e and other specimens of 

 Compsognathus from the Jurassic of Solen- 

 hofen. He has made a special examination 



• ' Les AncSstres des Jlosasauriens,' Hullelin 

 Scientifiquc dc la France et de la Bclgiquc, extr. 

 du Tome XXXVIII. 



t ' N'eiies iiber Compsognathus,' Sep.-Abdr. a. d. 

 \eiirn Jahrb. f. Miner., flrol. u. Palncont., Beilage- 

 Baiul XVI., 1!)03, S. 476^94. 



of the so-called ' embrj'o ' discovered by Marsh 

 in the body cavity of the Munich type; and 

 he comes to the conclusion that this supposed 

 embryo is the skeleton of a small lizard. 

 Osborn* has recently described a supposed 

 bird-catching Dinosaur found in the Come 

 beds of Wyoming and now mounted as a re- 

 markably complete skeleton in the collection 

 of the American Museum of Natural History. 

 This type probably belongs to the same sub- 

 division of the Carnivorous Dinosaurs as 

 Compsognaihus, namely, the Compsognatha 

 of Huxley, distinguished by hollow vertebra 

 in contrast with the solid hour-glass-shaped 

 vertebrae of the Megalosauria. Ornitholesles 

 is particularly distinguished by three very 

 long, slender fingers on the manus, the other 

 fingers being reduced, hence the supposition 

 that it was adapted to grasping a slender and 

 agile pre.v such as the Jurassic birds. 



Sauropoda. — Our knowledge of the Sauro- 

 poda, or amphibious Dinosaurs, is being en- 

 riched by descriptions of remarkably complete 

 specimens of Brontosaiirus in the Field Co- 

 lumbian, Carnegie and American Museums. 

 Dr. E. S. Eiggs has briefly described the 

 former and is now preparing an elaborate 

 paper. Mr. J. B. Hatcher is describing the 

 Carnegie Museum skeleton. In the American 

 Museum of Natural History, an exceptionally 

 large skeleton of Brontosaiirus, discovered in 

 1898, is being restored and mounted complete. 

 In the Yale University Museum the pelvis and 

 hind limbs of the still more perfect type skele- 

 ton of B. excehus have recently been mounted 

 under the direction of Professor C. E. Beecher. 



Mr. Hatcheif shows that Pleurocoelus nanus 

 Marsh, the smallest of the Sauropoda, is iden- 

 tical with Astrodon johnsoni Leidy, and is 

 closely related, as Marsh pointed out, to re- 

 mains found in Jurassic deposits near Havre, 

 Normandy. 



*' Ornithohstes herma-nni, a New Conipsoguatli- 

 oid Dinosaur from the X'ppcr Jurassic." Bull. 

 Amcr. Mus. Xat. Hist., Vol. XIX., 1903, art. XII., 

 pp. 4.59-404. 



t ' Discovery of Remains of Astrodon {Pleura- 

 c(^us) in the Atlantosaurus Beds of Wyoming.' 

 Ann. Carnegie Museum, Vol. II., 1903, pp. 9-14. 



