200 TEN YEARS^ PROGRESS IN VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY 



found there. The Miocene formation all along the South Atlantic sea- 

 board is a practically unworked mine of fossil cetaceans, sirenians, and, 

 to some degree, of pinnipeds also. 



The fossil mammalia described in earlier years from Bessarabia so 

 strongly resemble those of Maryland that new collections from that region 

 would be of great interest. 



It is extremely desirable that the types and other important specimens 

 of fossil cetaceans in the Saint Petersburg Museum should be reexamined, 

 and that photographic figures of them be published. 



A monograph of the genus Squalodon and its allies is of the highest 

 importance. 



A resume of existing knowledge of American fossil sirenians is much 

 to be desired. 



PALEOZOIC REPTILIA AND AMPHIBIA 

 BY E. C. CASE 



The earliest work on Paleozoic reptiles and amphibians to take definite 

 form was the work of Owen, Huxley, and Dawson on the material from 

 England, Ireland, South Africa, and Canada, now preserved in the Brit- 

 ish Museum of Xatural History and the Museum of Practical Geology in 

 London; that of Gaudry on the fossils from the Permian of Autun in 

 France, now in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and that 

 of Cope on his collections from Texas, now in the possession of the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History in New York. Later came the work of. 

 Fritsch on the Permian remains from the Pilsen basin and Kuonova in 

 Bohemia, now in the Prague Museimi ; that of Credner on the discoveries 

 of Branchiosaurus and related forms from the vicinity of Dresden, now 

 in the Museum of the Imperial Geological Survey at Leipzig, and Seeley's 

 extensive "Researches on the Structure, Organization, and Classification 

 of the Eeptilia," dealing largely with the fossils from the Permian of 

 South Africa, preserved in the British Museum of Natural History and 

 the South African ^luseum at Cape Town. 



These collections and the work on them led, finally, to the fonnulation 

 of two important generalizations. First, Baur's paper "The Stegoce- 

 phali, a phylogenetic study," published in the Anatomischer Antzeiger in 

 1896, which presents the conclusive arguments for the derivation of the 

 Stegocephalia from the Crossopterygian fishes. Second, the formulation 

 and support by Cope and Baur of the theory that the primitive reptiles 

 Cotylosauria were derived directly from the Stegocephalia by the appear- 

 ance of a single occipital condyle and the loss of the parasphenoid bone, 



