THE USE OF OUTLINE CHARTS IN TEACHING 
VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY 
MAURICE G. MEHL 
It is undoubtedly the common experience of all teachers of 
vertebrate paleontology and comparative osteology that only 
those anatomical structures or relations presented to the student 
through visual instruction become a part of his real working 
store of knowledge. Occasionally the exceptional teacher is 
able to fix uninteresting facts in the student’s mind by means 
of fitting illustrations, fascinating stories, or accounts of first 
hand experiences. Certain it is, however, that only in pro- 
portion as the student visualizes a structure is he able to retain 
it. For this reason the teacher of paleontology usually feels 
very keenly the need of a large supply of museum or laboratory 
materials; mounted skeletons, skeletal parts, drawings, charts, 
transparencies, etc. 
There are few colleges or universities that have an adequate 
supply of skeletal material for teaching vertebrate paleontology 
to the best advantage. Even so, much of the material avail- 
able is not entirely safe in the hands of the inexperienced student. 
As a rule the lack of space, the cost involved, or the fact that 
collections are built up but slowly and many specimens cannot 
be duplicated, holds the collections down to a few illustrative 
types. Each institution is inclined to specialize in, to over em- 
phasize, perhaps, the group or groups which are most available 
to it, and for illustrative material in other groups the student 
is forced to depend on written or oral descriptions and drawings. 
Were one able to study in several institutions till the entire field 
had been covered this would constitute ideal instruction, to be 
sure, but this is impossible in many cases. 
It was because of a lack of skeletal parts by means of which 
the student could become thoroughly acquainted with the struc- 
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Copyright, 1919, by M. G. Mehl. 
