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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVI1 



bone, which has been interpreted as a vestige of the first finger. 

 He considers it to be simply an ossified tendon supporting the 

 patagial membrane running from the arm to the neck. He bases 

 this conclusion on the relations of this structure in the well pre- 

 served skeleton of Nijctosaurus in the Field Museum fully de- 

 scribed some few years ago by Dr. Williston. 



In view of these facts there seems no longer to be any question 

 that the wing finger of the pterodactyls is the fourth. The re- 

 duction of the phalanges of the wing finger from the primitive 

 number of 5 to 4 is accounted for on the assumption that the claw 

 of the finger has been lost as has the same structure in the bats. 

 Further evidence is brought forth in the nature of the carpus to 

 sustain the homology of the wing finger of the pterodactyls with 

 the fourth digit of other reptiles. 



The Annals of the Queensland Mumum™ contains two articles 

 on fossil vertebrates by C. W. de Wis, former director of the 

 museum. One of the papers describes a new species of bird, 

 Pala ok sites gorei, based on a single phalange. The specimen is 

 carefully described, but the geological position is not given, the 

 comparisons of the new form with other species of the same kind 

 are not attempted so that one wonders just why the paper was 

 published, since it really throws no new light on the subject ex- 

 cepting perhaps to extreme ornithological experts. 



The same author in a few lines describes a new cestraciont fish 

 from a single imperfect tooth. The form is insufficiently defined 

 and no comparisons are given. 



A new member of the theropodous Dinosauria has been de- 

 scribed by Mignon Talbot 10 from remains discovered in an "er- 

 ratic bowlder" of Connecticut Valley Triassic sandstone, which 

 according to Talbot was carried two or three miles from its orig- 

 inal source by the glacier. The stone contains the larger part of 

 the skeleton of a small dinosaur of the carnivorous type, a mem- 

 ber, undoubtedly, of those reptiles which made the so-called 

 "bird-tracks" in the Connecticut Valley sandstone, so admirably 

 described by Hitchcock, Lull and others. The find is a very un- 

 usual and exceedingly interesting one, since Triassic dinosaurs 

 are not at all abundant. The animal when alive could not have 

 been much larger than an ordinary-sized chicken, thus serving to 

 restrain the common conception of dinosaur sizes. 



"Brisbane, Australia, No. 10, November, 1911. 



19 Amer. Journ. Science, June, 1911. 



