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ON SOME NEW FOSSIL EEPTILES FEOM THE KAEEOO 

 BEDS OF VICTOEIA WEST, SOUTH AFEICA. 



By E. Beoom, M.D., D.Sc, C.M.Z.S. 



(Eead March 27, 1907.) 



(Plates III., IV.) 



During the recent summer hoKdays one of my students, Mr. 

 T. J. E. Scholtz, has been fortunate in discovering, in the neighbour- 

 hood of Victoria West, evidences of a most important and entirely 

 new reptilian fauna. Hitherto little or no collecting has ever been 

 done here, and the district was suspected to be on the same 

 geological horizon as Colesberg and Middleberg, and to belong to 

 the middle division of the Beaufort, called the Lystrosaurus Beds. 

 Almost all the fossils already known from these beds are the aquatic 

 reptile Lystrosaurus and fish, principally of the genus Atherstonia, 

 the only land forms being a small Dicynodon and a very small 

 Diaptosaurian reptile resembling Saurosternon from Colesberg. Not 

 improbably Mr. Scholtz has discovered the remains of the land fauna 

 which was contemporaneous with the aquatic Lystrosaurus and 

 Atherstonia. Whether or not this suggestion is correct only further 

 research can show, but apart altogether from the question of the 

 geological horizon, the forms are of unusual interest to the 

 palaeontologist and morphologist, and I hasten to give a descrip- 

 tion of, the better-preserved remains. In the small collection of 

 fossils are the remains of at least five forms, and three of these are 

 sufficiently well preserved to admit of description. 



Galechirus scholtzi, g. et sp. nov. 



This small reptile is represented by two specimens procured near 

 the same spot, each being a small block of fine-grained sandstone 

 with the impressions of most of the bones of the skeleton. Speci- 

 men A, which is taken as the type, shows comparatively little of 

 the bones remaining, but the impressions are for the most part 

 well preserved. Of the skull there is seen the anterior half of the 



