179 



OBSEKVATIONS regarding a FOOTPRINT from the 

 KEUPER SANDSTONE at STORETON ; with 

 a note on the probable structure of the foot by Prof. 

 H. G. Seeley, F.E.S., F.G.S., &c. 



By H. G. Beasley. 



With Plate VII. 



[Read January 15th, 1897.] 



The footprint, in question (PI. VII., fig. 1), is the natural 

 cast, in relief, of the impression of a short broad foot, 

 armed with strong claws, measuring about one inch in 

 total length and slightly less in breadth, and came from 

 the well known footprint bed on the east side of the 

 south quarry at Storeton, Cheshire. After reading a paper 

 before the Brit. Assoc, at their Liverpool Meeting, I pointed 

 this out as one of the most perfectly preserved examples I 

 had found, and Prof. Seeley very kindly examined it 

 with great care and afterwards wrote to me as follows : — 

 "I find it to show five digits with the claws all turned 

 outwards. The fourth and fifth are close together, and 

 what I regard as the impression of the fifth digit is very 

 shallow, as though its claw were indicated by the tri- 

 angular paper pointer gummed upon the original slab. 

 I take the outward direction of the claw probably to 

 indicate a burrowing habit like that of the ornithorhynchus, 

 and therefore an animal with long body, short legs, and 

 shoulder girdle, and humerus of the Monotreme type, 

 though the same conditions would be found in the 

 Anomodont. The impression of the digits is well defined 

 and seems to me like what I figured in the Phil. Tran- 

 sactions, 1888, pi. 76, as found in a Dicynodont named 

 Keirognathus in the short broad form of the foot. The 

 impression of the thin fleshy pad of the foot shows some 

 of the carpal bones, on the hypothesis that the foot is a 



