124 CATALOG OF FOSSIL FISHES IN THE MUSEUM 



gradually narrowing toward anterior extremity, which is a sharp 

 beak-like point. Anterior margin straight, without spiniferous proc- 

 ess. Outer face of plate ornamented with large, non-stellate tubercles 

 which have a tendency to fuse into irregular masses. Plate thickest 

 posteriorly, thinning anterior-ward. 



[Deinos, fearful, terrible; odous, tooth.] 



The species is named for Mr. Lewis J. Bennett, the owner of the 

 Buffalo Cement Quarry, and an Honorary Director of the Biiffalo 

 Society of Natural Sciences. To Mr. Bennett's interest in the fossils 

 found in this quarry is due the magnificent collection of Eurypterids 

 in the Museum, regarded as one of the finest in the world, and ob- 

 tained at considerable expense to him by his paying the workmen 

 premiums for discovering specimens. It was in this quarry also that 

 the type of the present species was found. 



Remarks. — These extraordinary dental plates are so unlike any 

 others known, that we have no hesitation in basing a new genus upon 

 them. They apparently belong in the same category with the rhyn- 

 chodont type of dental plate. But the ornamentation of the outer 

 face is a most extraordinary character, clearly indicating that this 

 face was not covered with soft tissue in life. 



In the same formation with these dental elements occur fragmentary 

 plates with similar tubercles, which evidently belong to the same fish. 

 These plates, both in shape and ornamentation, are very suggestive 

 of certain Carboniferous plates and spines from the Mountain Lime- 

 stone of Armagh, Ireland, figured by J. W. Davis^^^ and ascribed by 

 him to Or acanthus milleri Agassiz. In the same rock with these are 

 found spines of the so-called Oracanthus which has since been 

 demonstrated by A. S. Woodward*^'' to belong in the family of 

 Gyracanthidae. 



Among the specimens in the Buffalo Museum are three nearly 

 complete spiniferous plates, exceedingly like those figured by Davis, 

 plate 65, figures 3 and 4. In our examples, however, the ornamental 

 denticles are more discrete. 



From the same Mountain Limestone, Davis figured under the 

 generic title "Rhamphodus," certain problematical dental plates 

 which in profile are exceedingly suggestive of Rhynchodus. These 

 dental plates were considered by Davis, and later by Woodward, to 



ISO Davis, J. W.: On the fossil fishes of the Carboniferous limestone series of Great Britain 

 Trans. Roy. Dublin Soc, [2], I, 525; pi. 62, figs. 3, 4, 7, 13; pi. 65, figs. 3, 4. 1883 



«8> Woodward, a. S.: On a Carboniferous fish fauna from the Mansfield District. Mem. Victoria 

 Nat. Mus., Melbourne, I, 1-32, 1906. 



