24 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



physial projections above, elevated into prominent though blunt 

 tuberosities. 



The facet for the third vertebra is convex from side to side, and 

 looks almost directly upward, it facing slightly backward ; the 

 similar surface for the atlas, anteriorly, being much more extensive, 

 twice as broad, continuous with the articular surface beneath the 

 odontoid process, is directed forward. Solidity and great breadth 

 marks the third cervical vertebra; in it bony laminae connect, on 

 either side, the pre- and postzygapophyses, an elliptical foramen be- 

 ing found in the surface near each lateral margin. There is a con- 

 spicuous neural spine with thickened crest, while below we have a 

 quadrate hypapophysis. The vertebral canal is completely closed in, 

 and parial parapophysial processes begin to make their appearance, 

 being directed backward; in all of the vultures these spinelike 

 appendages are long and styliform in mid neck, to become broad 

 and tuberous as we proceed dorsalward. 



Facets upon the pre- and postzygapophyses of this vertebra are 

 elliptical in outline and comparatively large ; the former are directed 

 upward and a little forward, the latter almost directly downward. 

 The anterior facet of the centrum, below and immediately outside 

 the neural canal, partakes of its usual ornithic characters; it is very 

 narrow from above downward and decidedly concave from side 

 to side. In this vertebra, the last remnants of the carotid canal 

 are present in all of the Cathartidae ; it is formed in its usual man- 

 ner as we pass down the serial segments. In Sarcorhamphus 

 gryphus its first appearance is made in the nth cervical, but 

 in the ioth in Gyparchus papa, as is also the case in 

 Carthartes a . sept entr ionalis and Catharista. 

 More or less complete interzygapophysial bars are found joining 

 the process laterally in the fourth- vertebra. The hypapophysis of 

 this segment is reduced to a low ridge beneath, while superiorly the 

 neural spine still projects from the lamina, mesiad, as a vertical peg- 

 like process. The articular facets are about as we found them in 

 the preceding vertebra. 



As a rule, the hypapophysial process throughout the cervical 

 series, after passing it when it is double for the carotid arteries, is 

 found better marked on the next two or three ultimate vertebrae. 

 Those cervical vertebrae that possess free ribs rarely show a dis- 

 tinct hypapophysis, but in them the centrum beneath is broad and 

 oblong in figure with a faint ridge mesiad at the usual site. 



