118 Scientific Intelligence. 



yielding phytosaur and labyrinthodont bones (both types were 

 found at El Rito), corresponding well with like vertebrates from 

 the Keuper of Europe. Below these beds there are not less than 

 350 feet (in the Lander and Kansas regions perhaps 900 feet) of 

 more uniform red sandstones and clay layers, usually weathering 

 into more vertical bluffs, that are utterly barren of all fossils and. 

 supposed to be of Lower Triassic and Upper Permian age. Below 

 these, and conformable with them, in New Mexico and probably 

 elsewhere are not less than 300 feet, probably more, of prevailing- 

 coarser and darker colored, often brownish sandstones, and dark- 

 colored clay beds, yielding vertebrate remains hitherto considered 

 to be of Permian age, but which in all probability are, in part at 

 least, of upper Pennsylvanian age" (pp. 5, 6). 



Then follows a list of known vertebrates from the Permo-Car- 

 boniferous beds of New Mexico, including a shark, five genera of 

 amphibians and ten of reptiles. 



Chapter II, also by Case and Williston, amplifies the descrip- 

 tion of the amphibian Aspicloscmrus novomexicamis, of which the 

 type specimen is preserved at Yale. Chapter III, by Mehl, de- 

 scribes a new genus and species of Stegocephalian, Chenoprosoptis 

 milleri, of which the peculiar elongated skull alone is surely known, 

 there being some doubt as to the identity of an associated ver- 

 tebra. 



Chapter IV is again by the two senior authors, and describes 

 the nearly complete skeleton of the reptilian species, Diasparactus 

 zenos, supposed with others of its family to have been a marsh- 

 dweller, a very sluggish, harmless eater of vegetation or small 

 invertebrates, able to present no more than a passive defense 

 against the attacks of the larger carnivorous forms. 



Chapter V, by the same two writers, has for its subject a nearly 

 complete skeleton of the reptile, Ophiacodon Marsh, of which the 

 type material is also at Yale. The new specimen lay almost com- 

 pletely articulated in the rock and has been entirely restored and 

 mounted at the University of Chicago. Ophiacodon was neither 

 a swimming nor a burrowing animal, but was slow moving, and 

 doubtless spent its life about the flat marshes and low plains, feed- 

 ing upon such small reptiles and amphibians as it could secure. 

 Its long, slender, recurved teeth were well adapted for the capture 

 of slippery creatures, but, with the jaws, they were too weak to 

 withstand much struggling of strong-bodied prey. 



The chapter also includes a description of Scoliomus puercensis, 

 new genus and species, a pelyeosaur. 



In Chapter VI, Case and Williston give a description of bones 

 referred to Sphenacodon Marsh. This is a carnivorous reptile of 

 rapacious habits, to judge by its teeth, and aside from this is 

 chiefly interesting in showing to a certain extent the peculiar elon- 

 gation of the vertebral spines so characteristic of its more noted 

 relatives, Dimetrodon and the bizarre " ship-lizard," Naosaurus. 

 In Sphenacodon the spines are extraordinarily long for a reptile, 



