May 7, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



713 



MSS. for this work cost him much labor, 

 especially during the past two years, and 

 for a while interrupted all his other work. 

 It was characteristic of him to turn aside 

 for a laborious detailed investigation of the 

 soft anatomy of the snakes in the hopes of 

 finding some satisfactory means of classify- 

 ing this puzzling group . This investigation 

 constituted his latest original work and was 

 barely completed before his death. 



MAMMALIA. 



Up to 1868 Leidy held the Western pale- 

 ontological field exclusively. In this year 

 Marsh and Cope also entered the Western 

 territory and began the simultaneous ex- 

 ploration and description of a limited fauna 

 in a somewhat limited region, with the in- 

 evitable result of a struggle for priority 

 and a permanent rupture of friendly inter- 

 course. It is necessary to allude to the 

 fact, because it greatly affected the subse- 

 quent history of American paleontology. 

 Fortunately, the western fossil area proved 

 to be a vast one, and the remarkable dis- 

 coveries by Wortman in the Big Horn and 

 Wasatch, beginning in 1878, also by Bald- 

 win in the Puerco of New Mexico, begin- 

 ning in 1880, and the explorations already 

 described of Cummins in the Permian of 

 Texas, afforded Cope a noble field of re- 

 search quite free from the haste of rivalry. 

 From the Wasatch ungulates Cope estab- 

 lished the stem forms of three lines of Per- 

 issodactyla and of far wider import than 

 these, the foundations of the classification 

 of the great group of Ungulata. The gen- 

 eralized Phenacodus, which he at first re- 

 garded as a perissodactyl, furnished the 

 key to the evolution of the carpus and tar- 

 sus, from the serial (Taxeopod) to the dis- 

 placed (Amblypod and Diplarthrous) types 

 with the interlocking joints. Kowalevsky, 

 in 1873, had pointed out the significant ar- 

 ticulations of the metapodials; Cope now 

 showed the still greater importance of the 



mutual articulations of the podials, firmly 

 establishing thereupon the orders Condyl- 

 arthra and Amblypoda, uniting Owen's Peris- 

 sodactyla and Artiodactyla into the Dip- 

 larthra, and by hypothetical phyla connect- 

 ing the Proboscidia and Hyracoidea with a 

 still-to-be-discovered plantigrade, unguicu- 

 late, bunodont stem, the ' protungulate ' of 

 Huxley and Kowalevsky. These general- 

 izations, despite errors of excess and of 

 detail which Riitimeyer and Osborn have 

 pointed out, constituted the first distinct 

 advance in mammalian classification since 

 Owen demolished Cuvier's ' pachydermata;' 

 they rank with Huxley's best work among 

 similar problems, and afford a basis for the 

 phylogenetic arrangement of the hoofed 

 orders which has been adopted by all 

 American and foreign paleontologists. 



At the same time it became apparent that 

 the hoofed mammals had sprung from 

 clawed ancestors, but the Wasatch period 

 was too remote from the parting to furnish 

 conclusive evidence. This evidence came 

 in a flood from the underlying Puerco fauna, 

 the systematic treatment of which consti- 

 tutes the most unique section of Cope's 

 work among the extinct mammalia. From 

 this material originated his second great 

 generalization — namely, that the primitive 

 pattern of the molar tooth consists of three 

 tubercles. Around this trituberculy centers 

 the whole modern morphology of the teeth 

 of the mammalia and the establishment of 

 a series of homologies in the teeth of most 

 diverse types, wholly unsuspected in the 

 ' Odontologies ' of Cuvier and Owen, con- 

 necting the most ancient Mesozoic mam- 

 mals with the most modern and specialized 

 types, including the teeth of man. The 

 force and application of the tritubercular 

 law Cope clearly perceived, but left to others 

 to fully work out and demonstrate. It 

 promises ultimately to give us the key to 

 the entire phylogeny of the mammalia, ex- 

 tending to every division of the Marsupialia 



