APPENDIX. 



Art. X. — Footprints of Vertebrates, in the Coal Measures of 

 Kansas ; by O. C. Marsh. (With Plates II and III.) 



The Museum of Yale University contains a small collection 

 of footprints of much interest, which were found in 1873, in 

 the Middle Coal Measures, near Osage, in southeastern Kansas. 

 This collection is part of a larger series of specimens obtained 

 at the locality by the late Prof. B. F. Mudge, who published a 

 short notice of the discovery, which was subsequently copied 

 in this Journal (vol. vi, p. 228, 1873). The writer examined 

 this entire collection at Manhattan, Kansas, in the autumn of 

 1873, and secured it for the Yale Museum. The more impor- 

 tant specimens were then sent to New Haven, and tracings and 

 notes were taken of the others, which were left to be for- 

 warded later. A careful re-examination of these footprints 

 has been recently made by the writer, and the main results are 

 given in the present article. 



The impressions are well preserved in a calcareous shale, 

 which separates readily into thin slabs, each representing a 

 surface of the beach at the time the footprints were made 

 upon it. A few shells in the shale are sufficient to prove that 

 the formation is marine. Trails of annelids, and perhaps of 

 other invertebrates, are seen on some of the surfaces. The 

 footprints of vertebrate animals, however, are of paramount 

 importance, and the large number and variety of these here 

 recorded on a single surface, if they could be rightly inter- 

 preted, would form an interesting chapter of land vertebrate life 

 in the Carboniferous, about which so little is at present known. 



On Plate II, accompanying the present article, five distinct 

 series of footprints are shown, each one-twelfth natural size. 

 All were found on essentially the same surface, and at one 

 locality. The five different animals they represent were thus 

 contemporaries, and indicate a wealth of air-breathing, land 

 vertebrate life at this period, hitherto unsuspected. 



Am. Jour. Scl— Third Series, Vol. XLVIII, No. 283.— July, 1894. 

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