4 
LEA’S DESCRIPTION OF A FOSSIL SAURIAN 
some cases, in the Connecticut Valley, the impressions are so numerous as to create 
a confused surface, and the distinct foot-marks in the vicinity only prove their 
identity. The evidence of “ripple marks” which usually accompany these foot¬ 
marks, prove them to be littoral, and the marks of “ rain drops” are often observed 
with them. Some of the birds which left their foot-impressions in these rocks were 
of gigantic size, far larger than any living species, but not of greater dimensions than 
some of those described by Prof. Owen, the bones of which were taken to London 
from New Zealand, and which he named Dinornis.. 
Accompanying the numerous species of Ornithichnites in the Connecticut Red 
Sandstone, Prof. Hitchcock found foot-marks of Sauroid animals, of which he has 
given descriptions and figures in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, vol. 3d, new series, as Dr. Deane has also done in vol. 4th, all of which had 
attracted great attention, when first published in the American Journal of Science. A 
new interest has, however, arisen in the discovery of fossil foot-marks of reptiles, air- 
breathing animals, in rocks of an earlier epoch; and geologists were startled with the 
announcement, a few years since, of Mr. Logan’s discoveries in the coal rocks of Nova 
Scotia, and of Dr. King’s, subsequently, near Greensburg, Pennsylvania, they having 
dicovered unquestionable foot-marks of reptiles in the sandstone of the coal measures; 
those of Dr. King accompanied by the tracks of birds. (?) Dr. King made his discovery 
known by a communication to the Academy of Natural Sciences of this city, in Dec., 
1844. He described and figured, in the Proceedings, several “ Saurian reptiles,” and 
in the American Journal of Arts and Sciences, April, 1845, gave additional figures. 
Mr. Lyell communicated to the American Journal of Science and Arts, October, 
1843, the fact that Mr. Logan had discovered, in the “ripple marked sandstones” of 
Horton Bluff—coal formation of Nova Scotia—“ footsteps, which appeared to Mr. 
Owen to belong to some unknown species of reptile, constituting the first indications 
of the reptilian class known in the carboniferous rocks.” 
No Saurian foot-prints had, before these announcements, been found lower 
in the series than the New Red Sandstone. Dr. King states that the tracks found 
by him were on the exposed surface of a stone “ fifteen by twenty feet, rising, like 
the other rocks in the neighborhood, to the west, and dipping, at a small angle, to the 
east. It is a coarse grained sandstone, about 150 feet below the largest of our coal 
seams, and near 800 feet beneath the topmost stratum of our coal formation. From 
the fact of the existence of numerous holes or pots, some of which will hold fifteen or 
twenty gallons, excavated, as we know they are at the present day, by the whirling 
of pebbles, set in motion by a running stream, I infer that the stone must have lain 
in the bed of a river which was subject to partial periodical desiccation.”* “ In 
another locality, about twelve miles distant, but in the same synclinal axis, on a slab 
* Proceedings of the Acad. Nat. Sci., v. 2, p. 178. 
