E. Hitchcock on Fossil Footmarks of the Connecticut Vailey. 51 
uunced it a reptile. Others, however, as Prof. Owen of 
puter and Prof. Dana of New Haven, believe it to have a 
predominence of ornithic characters, so as to make it a bird. 
Some important parts of the skeleton are wanting, as the head, 
neck, dorsal atin and sacrum, and the ribs are detach 
and scattered abou e forearm consists of radius and ulna, 
a metacarpal bone, ae a few detached small fingers; also two 
sbuait slender bones with sharp claws like those on the hind 
0 may have been used for clinging, or as weapons of 
The lower right limb consists of a femur, tibia, and tarso-meta- 
_ tarsus, to which ene hind toe and three foretoes are articulated, 
_ the phalanges being one, two, three, and four, though the last 
_ number is a little doubttal, on account of the position of the 
_ outer toe. The tees are all armed with sharp claws 
The tail is six inches in length and consists of twenty verte- 
bree, of narrow elongated form, diminishing in size to the last. 
The feathers of the tail are attached in pairs to each vertebra 
throughout its entire length. 
Now between these paareyn and these of some of our 
_ Lithichnozoa there are some remarkable analogies or resem- 
blances, so far as I ean judge, itor which I would now indicate 
—at least such as have arrested my attention, with some of the 
inferences that follow. It is perhaps unexpected that they ally 
the Archeopteryx rather to the quadrupedal Anomeepus than 
the biped tridactyles in my Ichnology. 
1. In both we have on the hind foot three front toes articulated 
to a stout tarso-metatarsal, and not as in all animals except birds, 
_ toa tarsus of several bones. This resemblance applies also’ a 
_ the biped, thick-toed, tridactyle cores rye. as well as to the 
Anomeepus, for they must all have had tarso-metatarsals below 
the tibia and fibula, though no impression among the 
any such bone. a we have the most decisive evidence 
that these animals had only three toes, and where in existin 
nature do we find that ss artionlated with anything but a 
——— except a few cases in the Ruminantia and 
Soli 
2. They both had the same number of phalanges in the three 
_ front toes, though a little doubt remains as to the outer toe of 
_ the latter. The same number of phalanges existed in a 
