AFRICA IN VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY 109 
Transverse. Antero-posterior diameter. 
Teeth. [Right side] 
m 2 
10-5 
11 
®1 
11 
11*5 
[Left side] 
% 
11 
12 
Cranial Capacity (Lee’s formula, employing auricular height), 1275 c.c. 
Indices and Angles. 
Breadth index . 
68 
Altitudinal index 
. 62-3 
Alveolar „ . 
. 98 (?) 
Orbital „ . 
. 85-8 
Nasal „ . 
. 52 
Palatine . 
. 107-4 
Calvarial height . 
. 49-1 
Dental (R.) . 
. 95-6 
„ ®2 (R.) • 
. 95-4 
Indices and Angles. 
Dental M x (L.) . 
# 
91-6 
Frontal bone index . 
97-2 
Gonio-symphysial (mandible) 
110-8 
Bregma angle . 
. 
50° 
Lambda ,, 
. 
75° 
Facial (Frankfort) 
. 
84° 
Basilar (Broca) No. 1 
. 
17° 
„ „ No. 2 
13-5 ( 
Foramino-sellar 
127° 
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF AFRICA IN VERTEBRATE 
PALAEONTOLOGY 
By C. W. Andrews, D.Sc. F.R.S. (British Museum, Natural 
History). 
In the history of the world perhaps no phenomenon is 
more striking than the rapid growth of our knowledge of the 
African continent during the last half-century. Within the 
last few years this advance has been especially marked in 
the case of Geology and Palaeontology, much light having 
been thrown on the former physical conditions and inhabitants 
of this region. It is a remarkable circumstance that although 
Africa has long been admitted to be one of the oldest land- 
areas in the world, portions of it not having been submerged 
since the Permian period or even earlier, nevertheless there 
has been, until quite recently, a strong and unreasonable 
tendency among Palaeontologists to deny that this continent 
had been the centre of origin of any important groups of animals. 
So recently as 1900 Professor H. F. Osborn referred to Africa 
as ‘ the dark continent of Palaeontology, for it has practically 
no Mammal history.’ Although, at the time, this was true in 
the case of the Mammalia, it was by no means so in the case of 
the Reptilia, of which a great number of extraordinarily inter- 
esting forms had long been known from the Permian and 
