CHAPTER VI. 



THE FOSSIL FISHES OF OHIO. 



By Prof. E. W. Claypole, B. A., D. Sc, (Lond.), F. G. SS. L.E. and A.; 



Buchtel College, Akron, O.; with a Supplement By 



Prof. A. A. Wright, of Oberlin College, O. 



No more interesting or more important contribution has been made 

 from Ohio to the world's knowledge of its extinct forms of life than the 

 chapter which begins with the breaking open of a concretion near Del- 

 aware, by the Rev. H. Hertzer, in 1864. He, by that stroke, exposed the 

 earliest of the strange fleet of Upper Devonian fishes, clad in bony 

 armour, which subsequent discoveries have so multiplied that it now 

 .forms a fauna scarcely second to that which was brought to day by the 

 labors of Hugh Miller from the almost equivalent rocks of the Old Red 

 Sandstone of Scotland. i 



Taking up the work where it was dropped by Mr. Hertzer, Mr. 

 Terrell of Oberlin, and Dr. Clark of Berea, have been the foremost la- 

 borers in, the field though others have given important assistance. Chiefly 

 through the indefatigable efforts of these two men we now have collec- 

 tions of fossils equaling in interest and value those which have been 

 yielded by any area of equal size anywhere. They have made the shales 

 of northern and central Ohio classic ground forever to the palaeontol- 

 ogists of the world. 



It was the genius of the late Dr. Newberry that interpreted the fos- 

 sils thus brought to light, traced their relations and illustrated their 

 structure. He it was who sagaciously outlined the anatomy of the 

 strange monsters of the Devonian seas leaving to his successors the task 

 of filling in the details and extending the work. 



No single species proved identical with any on the other side of the. 

 Atlantic and though new genera were defined to receive most of them, 

 yet their family resemblance was obvious to the anatomist. Parallel 

 types were found to have existed in both continents with wide differ- 

 ences of detail. 



Since that time, however, further research has discovered a few Eu- 

 ropean genera here and a few American types have been found in 



