Moodie — Distribution of the Fossil Amphibia. 189 



several regions, a long history of which we now have no record. 

 We see only the culminations of a long line of descent. 



The Stereospondylia without doubt arose in North America 

 in the Carboniferous, for we have early indications of the group 

 on this continent represented by tbe genera Eosaurus, Baphetes, 

 Eobaphetes, and possibly the Macrerpetidse and unnamed frag- 

 ments from the Coal Measures of Ohio and Nova Scotia. The 

 group is apparently unknown in the Permian, but representa- 

 tives of the group occur in the Upper Triassic of Wyoming. 

 Members of the stereospondylons Amphibia are, as stated 

 above, the most cosmopolitan of the pre-Pleistocene Amphibia. 



The distribution of -the Branchiosauria and the Caudata is 

 interesting to study and seems to confirm the contention that 

 the branehiosaurs are the ancestral forms of the salamanders. 

 They are known only from North America and Europe, appar- 

 ently not migrating either to Asia, Africa or South America 

 until relatively late in Tertiary times ; reaching Asia possibly 

 in the Pliocene, for we find the European Miocene Megaloba- 

 trachus (Cryptobranchus, Andrias scheuchzeri) well estab- 

 lished in Japan, in the Island of Nippon, where Th. von Siebold 

 in 1829 secured from the fish markets the earliest known 

 representative of this interesting salamander. This distribu- 

 tion indicates that the creatures had migrated across Eurasia 

 before the subsidence of the basin of the Japan Sea in pre- 

 Pleistocene times, or at least before the Strait of Korea was 

 formed. The Branchiosauria without doubt arose in .North 

 America, at least we find in this continent the oldest repre- 

 sentatives of the order. 



The Temnospondylia are first known from the Mazon Creek 

 beds and at a very slightly later geological period from the 

 Coal Measures of Bohemia. From Europe the group migrated 

 to the Oriental and Ethiopian regions in Upper Permian or 

 Lower Triassic times. Whether the group gave rise to any of 

 the numerous orders of reptiles, as has been suggested, is still 

 uncertain. 



A summary of the foregoing discussion will be found in the 

 accompanying table, and is graphically represented in the 

 accompanying map. 



Department of Anatomy, University of Illinois, Chicago. 



