TRANSLATIONS AND NOTICES 
OF 
GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 
The Repties of the Coat ForRMATION. 
By Herman von Meyer. 
[From a Review of ‘ Beitrage zur vorweltlichen Fauna des Steinkohlengebirges, 
von Dr. Goldfuss.’ Bonn, 1847, 4to, 5 plates, in Neue Jenaische Algem. Lit. 
Zeitung, Juli 1848, Nos. 164, 165, pp. 654-658. ] 
THE contributions to the ancient fauna of the coal formation con- 
tained in this memoir are of very high importance. The abundance 
of vegetables preserved in this deposit are well-known, but hitherto 
animal remains have been of much rarer occurrence. Thus the 
Arachnidze are represented by a scorpion-like creature; the Crusta- 
ceans consist of variously formed Entomostraca; the earliest Ortho- 
ptera and Lepidoptera appear in this epoch; the Mollusca are composed 
of littoral and deep-sea shells; among the vertebrated animals only 
fishes were lately known, namely, about a hundred species of the 
shark and ray, and scarcely half that number of Ganoids. The 
assumption therefore that reptiles did not exist before the Zechstein 
period seemed to have a foundation in facts. This view must now 
however be modified. Although it is still uncertain whether the bones 
found by Phillips in the limestone of Ardwick near Manchester, 
forming the upper part of the coal formation, actually belonged to 
reptiles or not, still the reviewer* has made known the complete 
skeleton of a small animal from the slate-clay of Miinster-Appel in 
Rhenish Bavaria, whose general aspect (Habitus) scarcely admits of 
any doubt that it was a reptile, and which the reviewer described, in 
the beginning of 1844, under the name of Apateon pedestris. Three 
years later the Director of Mines, Von Dechen, discovered in the 
spheerosiderite nodules of Lebach in the Saarbriick district, in which 
fishes had alone been previously found, the remains of a peculiar 
genus of Saurians. The author of this work (Dr. Goldfuss) exhibited 
the skull to the Natural History Society of the Lower Rhine, on the 
18th of February 1847, under the name of the Archegosaurus De- 
cheni, and at the same time described it as a crocodilian animal form- 
ing a transition to the lizards in consequence of the presence of a 
parietal foramen. 
* In the following memoir, by the Reviewer is to be understood H. von Meyer, 
by the Author, Prof. Goldfuss—TRANSLATOR. 
VOL. IV.—PART II. F 
