STUDIES IN PALEOPATHOLOGY. 



III. Opisthotonus and Allied Phenomena among 

 Fossil Vertebrates 

 PROFESSOR ROY L. MOODIE 

 Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, University 

 of Illinois 



Every student of the fossil vertebrates who is fortunate 

 enough to collect a number of complete or approximately 

 complete skeletons of fossil vertebrates is almost sure to 

 be impressed with the frequency of the peculiar curve to 

 the baekwardly bent neck and the rigid appearance of the 

 limbs, if these members are preserved in anything like 

 the position assumed by the animal at death. This atti- 

 tude of the skeleton is very common in the petrified re- 

 mains of extinct animals and it is doubtless what is known 

 to medical men as opisthotonos. Williston 1 in describ- 

 ing the remains of Cimoliosaurus Snoivii, a long-necked 

 plesiosaur, from the Cretaceous of Kansas, says : 



The specimen comprises the skull and twenty-eight cervical vertebra?, 

 all attached and with their relative positions but little disturbed. They 

 he upon the right side, with the usual opisthotonie curve to the neck, 

 and are all laterally compressed. 



The attitude ihas been noted among many other fossil 

 vertebrates, but its significance, so far as I am aware, has 

 never been commented upon. 



Many of the beautifully complete skeletons of the small 

 pterodactyls (Fig. 1), Pterodactyl us longirostris, P. brevi- 

 rostris, P. elegans, from the lithographic slate of Aich- 

 stadt, which were described many years ago by Goldfuss, 

 Cuvier, Wagner and Soemmering, exhibit a marked opis- 

 thotonie curve to the neck and a more rigid appearance 

 to the skeleton as a whole than is common among the 

 skeletons of these remarkable vertebrates. Pterodactylus 



i Trans. Kansas Acad. Set., 1890, p. 1. 



384 



