ICETHYOSAURIA iii 



tige of a great name, like that of Owen, will carry authority till 

 someone else with greater authority appears. Whether or not the 

 name Proteosaurus, first given to any member of this order, should 

 take precedence over the later Ichthyosaurus is still in doubt, since 

 Home gave no specific name to his species, and the very particular 

 purists of modern times have decided that a genus is not named 

 unless the species is also! We moderns sometimes are inclined 

 to impose very stringent conditions upon the older naturalists; 

 let us hope that we shall be treated more leniently by the future 

 naturahsts! 



It will lead us too far astray to follow in detail the history of 

 the further discoveries of the ichthyosaurs during the early part of 

 the nineteenth century. It may briefly be said, only, that no 

 other group of extinct backboned animals excited more interest 

 among scientific men. One incident will sufl&ce. More than sixty 

 years ago, an interesting deduction as to the hving form of the 

 ichthyosaurs was made by Sir Richard Owen. He observed that 

 many of the known skeletons, as they were found in their rocky 

 matrix, had a remarkable dislocation of the vertebrae at a cer- 

 tain place near the end of the tail, and, although such an append- 

 age was quite unknown in other reptiles either living or extinct, 

 concluded that the living animals had a terminal, horizontal, 

 fleshy fin, very much like that of the whales and sirenians. Sure 

 enough, discoveries made forty years later disclosed impressions in 

 the rocks, not only of a large caudal fin, but also of a dorsal fin, as 

 well as outlines of the flesh-covered paddles. The dislocation of 

 the vertebrae at the place where the fleshy fin joined the more 

 slender tail was due to the action of currents of water, or simple 

 gravitation, upon a thin vertical fin and not, as Owen supposed, 

 to the twisting of the terminal part as it fell to a horizontal position 

 after partial decomposition of the soft parts. 



About twenty-five years ago. Professor E. Fraas, the present 

 director of the Stuttgart Museum, described and figured very fuUy, 

 not only specimens showing impressions of the fins and paddles, 

 but also others of well-preserved and very complete skeletons of 

 different species of ichthyosaurs from the Jurassic deposits of 

 Wiirtemberg, in which remains of these animals occur in great 



