Meyer's pal^ontological notes. 15 



Tertebrse, showing no complete agreement witli the bones from Upper 

 Silesia or other countries. The teeth resemble those of the Notho- 

 saurus. Labyrinthodonts as yet are entirely wanting. Besides these 

 there has been found : in the bone-beds of the muschelkalk of Wogau 

 the humerus of two species, but not distinct from those of Jena ; in 

 the Wellenkalk (lower muschelkalk) of Lobedaburg a tooth of a 

 small species, formed like that of the Nothosaurus ; in the bone- 

 breccia of the muschelkalk of Keilhau near Rudolstadt, vertebrae of 

 a very small species ; in the terebratula-limestone of Zwetzen, a bone 

 of the pelvis ; in the highest beds of the muschelkalk at Mertendorf, 

 three leagues from Jena, a humerus ; and in the keuper-limestone of 

 Vieckberg near Apolda, a large, nothosaurus-like tooth. 



The fishes from this district, with those from Querfurth and from 

 Upper Silesia, will be described by me in one of the early numbers 

 of the ' Palseontographica,' the plates being already lithographed. 

 Besides scales and an unimportant fragment of the jaw of a small fish 

 with cylindrical teeth, the proper muschelkalk of Jena has only fur- 

 nished the Saurichthys tenuirostris, of which Agassiz (Pois. Foss. ii. 

 b, p. 88) incorrectly states that it only occurs in the muschelkalk of 

 Bavaria, where it is entirely unknown. It is confined to Jena, and 

 occasionally occurs also at Querfurth, from which the specimen was 

 derived which Biittner long ago figured (Rudera testis diluvii, 1710). 

 The glauconite muschelkalk of Mattstadt near Apolda contains teeth 

 of Saurichthys Mougeoti. More important is the terebratula-lime- 

 stone of Zwetzen, containing teeth of Placodiis, which, besides Pla- 

 codus gigas, seem to have belonged also to another species. The 

 most interesting specimen from Zwetzen is a jaw with several teeth 

 of a new genus of fish also of a large size, which from the dome or 

 cupola-like form of the top of the teeth I have named Tholodus, and 

 this species Tholodus Schmidi. It is best placed near Acrodus^ though 

 the teeth are wholly distinct. 



In the 'Athenaeum' for Jane 5, 1847, Sir R. Murchison has 

 published a letter of Agassiz from America, in which he expresses 

 his astonishment at the analogy which exists between the types of 

 life in the temperate regions of North America, and those in the 

 molasse of Oningen. He believes consequently that these deposits 

 were formed in a climate that was not tropical, and in this compari- 

 son he also introduces Japan. These are exactly the same views that 

 were already published in my work on ' The Fossil Mammalia, Birds 

 and Reptiles, from the Molasse Marls of Oningen,' which work 

 Agassiz knew before his journey to America. In that work I have 

 not only pointed out the close relation which the tertiary Oningen, 

 without renouncing its European character, still bore to the present 

 North America and Japan ; and also came to the conclusion that the 

 tertiary creatures of Oningen required for their existence a climate 

 not at all warmer than that which now prevails in the region of 

 Oningen, so that the assumption of a tropical climate in which the 

 animals of the molasse have lived, is anything but well founded. 



In Tayler's museum at Haarlem, which I visited in August 1847, 

 I saw the beautiful remains of the Mastodon found at Oningen, 



