October 11, 1901.] 



.SCIENCE. 



579 



to this locality, and owing to the skill and 

 energy of Mr. Gilmore the value of the Museum's 

 already important collections of Jurassic dino- 

 saui's has been greatly enhanced. The third 

 party has been in charge of Mr. W. H. Utter- 

 back, who has been engaged since November 

 last in reopening the old quarry near Canyon 

 City, Colorado, so long worked by the late Pro- 

 fessor Marsh. From this quarry Professor Marsh 

 obtained much of his best material of Jurassic 

 dinosaurs. The bones at this quarry are im- 

 bedded in a very hard sandstone, which renders 

 the work of securing them exceedingly difficult 

 and tedious. Already a considerable portion 

 of the skeletons of Morosaurus and Stegosaurus 

 has been secured, along with other valuable 

 material. Within the last month the work of 

 reopening the quarries near Canyon City, which 

 were operated for a number of years by the late 

 Professor Cope, has been commenced by Mr. G. 

 F. Axtell, also of the staflf of this Museum. 



DISCOVERIES IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 



In the September number of the Geological 

 Magazine Dr. Chas. W. Andrews * publishes 

 details of his discoveries in the Western Desert 

 of Egypt which niark the beginning of a new 

 epoch in mammalian paleontology. 'The first 

 visit to beds of upper Eocene and Oligocene age 

 resulted in the discovery of a Sirenian (prob- 

 ably Eotherium), of Zeuglodon, a primitive 

 Cetacean, and of Crocodilia, Chelonia and 

 Amphibia. In later visits still more impor- 

 tant fossils were secured, which Dr. Andrews 

 has made the types of three new genera. 

 Palseomastodon is a trilophodont proboscidean 

 with five grinding teeth in the lower jaw, there- 

 fore much more primitive than the oldest 

 Miocene mastodons of Europe. Mceritherium, 

 found in older beds of supposed Upper Eocene 

 age, is bilophodont and is probably correctly 

 regarded by Dr. Andrews ' as a generalized 

 forerunner of the mastodon type of probos- 

 cidean' ; the upper and lower incisors are in 

 pairs, the outer being tusk-like, as we should 

 anticipate. A third, more aberrant type is 

 Bradytherium ' which in many respects resembles 



*' Extinct Egyptian Vertebrates,' Geol. Mag., p. 

 400, Sept., 1901. 



Dinotherium, but in others reminds one of some 

 of the gigantic Amblypoda of North America.' 

 The resemblance to the Amblypoda is in 

 our opinion unreal because all amblypods 

 have triangular teeth, whereas this animal has 

 quadrate bilophodont teeth and reminds us 

 truly of Dinotherium as the author suggests. 

 A strong resemblance is also seen to the great 

 gravigrade sloths such as Megatherium or more 

 correctly to their American Eocene ancestors 

 with incisors and enameled teeth such as Psit- 

 tacotherium ; the depth of the jaw, the early 

 wearing of the enamel, the position of the cor- 

 onoid process on the outside of the lower 

 molars, all tend to support this likeness. We 

 shall therefore eagerly await the determination 

 of the actual afiinities of this animal. The 

 epoch-making character of these discoveries 

 consists in the promise they afford that Africa 

 will prove to be the home of all those families 

 of mammals such as the elephants, hippopot- 

 ami, giraffes and antelopes, as well as of earlier 

 types, which suddenly appeared in Europe 

 without known ancestry. This would accord 

 with an hypothesis independently advanced by 

 Riitimeyer and Osborn that Africa was an iso- 

 lated center of mammalian evolution and radi- 

 ation in the early tertiary, and subsequently 

 contributed great migrations of its fauna to 

 Europe and America. 



NOTES ON PRIMITIVE AND FOSSIL BIRDS. 



Pycraft's fourth paper in his ' Contributions 

 to the Osteology of Birds,' * treats of the grebes 

 and divers or Pygopodes. As regards the af- 

 finity of the Cretaceous toothed bird Hesperornis 

 to this order (rather than to the separate order 

 Odontornithes) he believes with D' Arcy Thomp- 

 son that there can no longer be any doubt 

 (p. 1041). The paper is supplemented by an 

 excellent key to the comparative osteology of 

 this group, a plan also followed in his extensive 

 memoir J on the morphology and phylogeny of 

 the Palosegnathse {Ratitse and Crypturi) and Neo- 

 gnathse (Carinatse). In this memoir the pteryl- 

 ography, osteology and soft anatomy of the 

 Tinamous {Crypturi) and of the various stru- 



* Proc. Zool. Soc, London, Dec. 19, 1901. 

 t Trans. Zool. Soc, London, Dec, 1900. 



