DEPOSITS ELSEWHERE THAN IN SOUTH AFRICA. 355 



The earliest ascription of the generic term Eurosaurus to Permian 

 fossils I find in a paper by Fischer von Waldheim, in tome xv. 

 1842, of the ' Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale des Naturalistes de 

 Moscou ' *. Fischer there states that he has several portions of 

 bone (not named) belonging to the same Saurian. A striking cha- 

 racter, he remarks, is the great breadth of the articular head com- 

 pared with the insignificant length of the bone, " as if," he says, 

 " that articular end (•' Gelenkkopf ') of the bone had been provided 

 with an aliform process ;" and he proposes for the new Saurian, so 

 indicated, the name of Eurosaurus. No other characters of the 

 genus nor any figure of the fossils are given. We recognize, how- 

 ever, in this curt notice, a characteristic of the proximal portion of 

 the humerus of Kutorga's Orthopus. 



The author next cites a " remarkable humerus distinguished by 

 its broad processes and the perforated articular surface for the 

 reception of the ulna, from the same locality as that in which the 

 mandible of the reptile called Rhopalodon was found ;" and this 

 humerus, the perforated character of which is perhaps more accu- 

 rately described by Kutorga in his Brithopus, Fischer thinks may 

 belong to his genus Rhopalodon f. 



It is significant, and probably by reason of the insufficient grounds 

 assigned by Fischer for his genus Eurosaurus of 1842, that Agassiz 

 has omitted it in the list of Eeptilian genera in his ' Nomenclator 

 Zoologicus,' 4to, 1842, and in the 'Addenda,' 1846. He gives 

 amongst the mammalian genera Kutorga's Brithopus and Orthopus, 

 but adds " Keptilia? " after each entry. 



Fischer's Rhopalodon WangenJieimiiyfBa founded on a portion of a 

 mandibular ramus, 2\ inches in length, containing " nine molars 

 with short, thick, pointed, subcompressed crowns having two tren- 

 chant and serrate borders ;" and, further, " at the anterior fractured 

 part of the fossil was the implanted base of a large canine." A 

 figure of the fossil is given by Eichwald in the ' Lethaea Eossica,' 

 1860, pi. lviii. fig. 9. So far as the characters are noted they 

 are " theriodont." 



In 1858 Hermann von Meyer described a fossil skull, presented 

 by Major von Qualen to the ' Mineralien Kabinet ' at Berlin, as 

 from the Permian system of West Ural, probably from the same 

 locality as the fossils described by Fischer. A skull from this 

 locality had previously been described by Eichwald under the name 

 of Zygosaurus lucius ; but v. Meyer's subject is referred by him, 

 under the name of Melosaurus uralensis, to the section of the Laby- 

 rinthodonts with embryonal vertebral column Z. The specimen 



* " Zweiter Nacktrag zu den von Hrn. Major von Qualen am westlichen 

 Abhange des Urals gesamruelten Versteinerungen," p. 463. 



t " Em merkwiirdiger Humerus, ausgezeicbnet durch seine breiten Fortsatze. 

 und die durchbohrte Gelenkflache zur Aufnahnae der Ulna, ist in derselben 

 Gregend gefunden worden, und scheint dem Ehopalodon anzugehoren." — lb. 

 p. 464. 



{ " Bei diesen Abweichungen habe ich den zweiten Schadel aus den Ural unter 

 der Benennung Melosaurus uralensis zu den Labyrintkodonten mit embryonaler 

 Wirbelsaule gestellt." — Neues Jahrbuck fur Mineralogie, <$fc, von K. C. von 

 Leonhard und H. G. Bronn, Jahrgang 1858, p. 301. 



