644 
DR. J. W. DAWSON ON ERECT TREES CONTAINING ANIMAL 
With these remains are a few bony scales different from those of any other species 
found in these trees, and more resembling scales of Ganoid Fishes. They are some¬ 
what rectangular in form, enamelled on the surface and beautifully sculptured with 
waving lines. 
In the same trunk were found some teeth and bones referable to Hylerpeton 
Dawsoni , and it is not impossible that the remains above referred to may have 
belonged to some creature devoured by that animal, and which would not otherwise 
have obtained admission to the interior of an erect tree. The tree itself had been 
removed by the sea, all but a little of the base, and this was in a very unsatisfactory 
state, so that doubt might even exist as to the limit between the deposit in the 
interior of the tree and that under its base. 
12. Amblyodon, gen, nov. (Plate 40, figs. 57 to 61). 
In tree No. 16 were found a few teeth and bones which do not seem referable to 
any of the genera above named, though pretty certainly belonging to a member of the 
group of Microsauria. 
A fragment of a jaw 1 centimetre in length has ten cylindrical teeth, simple and 
smooth, with large pulp cavities and rounded regularly at the apices. With these 
are four vertebras of the usual type, measuring together 1 centimetre. Fragments of 
cranial bones also occur and are obscurely pitted. There is also what seems to be the 
shaft of a limb bone and a few oval scales. A flat, somewhat rhombic bone with a 
style at one side may possibly be a thoracic plate or possibly a parasphenoid. 
The material is too scanty for any satisfactory description of this animal, but I have 
named it provisionally Amblyodon problematicum. 
13. Coprolitic Matter. 
This occurs in several of the trees, not in masses of regular form but in indefinite 
patches. It is of a gray or buff colour, and usually highly calcareous. It is often 
filled with comminuted bones not determinable; but evidently of small Batrachians 
and probably of Hylonomus. Fragments of chitinous matter also abound in some of 
the coprolitic masses. In most cases they seem to belong to Millipedes, but in a few 
examples insect remains occur. They are not determinable ; but in one specimen was 
a well-preserved fragment of a head apparently of a small neuropterous insect showing 
one of the compound eyes. Fragments of shells of Pupa are found in and near some 
of the coprolitic masses, and I think it probable that these pulmonates formed a part 
of the food of some of the Batrachian species. 
Some doubt must of course exist as to whether the substances contained in the 
coprolite represent the ordinary food of the amphibia or only that to which they had 
access while imprisoned in the erect trees. The facts so far as they go would indicate 
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