SIR R. OWEN ON A LABYRINTHODONT AMPHIBIAN. 300 
24, On a LasyrintHopont AMPHIBIAN (RHYTIDOSTEUS CAPENSIS * ) 
from the Trias of the Onance Frez Starz, Care or Goop Hor. 
By Sir Ricwarp Owen, K.C.B., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. (Read 
March 19, 1884.) 
| Puatres XVI. & XVIT.| 
In the year 1837 I examined, microscopically, the structure of 
certain teeth from the sandstone of Guy’s Cliff, Warwickshire, which 
had been submitted to me by their discoverer, Dr. Lloyd, F.G.S., of 
Leamington, the form of these teeth being that of simple canines. 
The well-marked and peculiar structure, so discovered, and the geo- 
logical correspondence of the matrix with the Keuper of Germany, 
induced me to apply to Prof. Jager of Stuttgart (whose acquain- 
tance, ripening into friendship, I had formed at the Meeting of the 
German naturalists in 1835, under the presidency of Oken, at 
Freiburg im Breisgau) for a tooth, or portion of tooth, of a fossil in 
his collection. 
To this I was moved by the fact that Jiiger had described certain 
remains from the Keuper of Wiirttemberg, as of a Saurian reptile, 
under the name of Mastodonsaurus, and it was to the teeth of this 
species that I wished to apply the microscopic test. 
My friend at once transmitted a tooth of this ancient reptile, and 
I was gratified to find therein the same peculiar structure which 
had led me to apply the generic term ‘ Labyrinthodon’ to the extinct 
species represented by the Warwickshire fossil tooth: this result 
was communicated to the Geological Society +. 
The batrachian or batrachoid character of the extinct possessor 
of teeth of this complexity was subsequently inferred from the 
structure of the bony palate in a portion of skull, also from the 
Keuper of Warwickshire, described and figured in a later paper 
under the name of Labyrinthodon leptognathus t. Subsequent 
knowledge of allied cold-blooded air-breathers has shown the laby- 
rinthodont dental character to be one of an order or, at least, of a 
group of anallantoid air-breathers of higher value than the genus. 
Accordingly, on receiving a cranial fossil from Mangali, Cen- 
tral India, with teeth manifesting the labyrinthic character, 
I proposed for it, in a paper communicated to the Geological 
Society in 1855, the generic name of Brachyops. Subsequently 
I recognized in a series of fossils from a Triassic sandstone 
of the Tafelberg, Queenstown district, Cape of Good Hope, sub- 
mitted to me in 1875, by Dr. Atherstone, F.G.S., the skull of a 
smaller labyrinthodont, remarkable for the granulate superficies of 
* ‘Pyris, wrinkle, doréov, bone. 
+ Transactions of the Geological Society, 4to, second series, vol. vi. 1841, 
p. 508, figs. 1 & 2. Similar fossils from the same locality had been referred by 
Murchison and Strickland to the Keuper. 
{ Loe. cit. pp. 515-543, pl. 43, figs. 1, 2. 
Q.J.G.8. No. 159. 2A 
