ON THE OSTEOLOGY OF NYCTOSAURUS. 161 
I am now satisfied that the femur in question belongs to a heavy-boned 
pterodactyl or some allied, hitherto unknown, animal. The very peculiar 
head of the bone with its articular convexity directed upward, the posi- 
tion of the trochanter, the hollow shaft and its curvature are characters 
all found in pterodactyls and in no other animals of which I have any 
knowledge. The entire length of the bone must have been about 350 or 
400 mm., and while the walls are unusually thick, they are not propor- 
tionally much more so than in Dermodactylus, the type of which I 
distinctly remember, Dermodactylus is from the so-called fresh-water 
beds of the Wyoming Jurassic, which I have long believed to be con- 
temporaneous with the Comanche beds of Kansas, and which I correlate 
with the Wealden of Europe. The forms cannot be the same, since this 
is very much larger. 
May 14, 1903. 
In an article by Mr. F. A. Lucas in the Report of the Smithsonian 
Institution for 1go1, there is given an excellent drawing of a skull of 
Pteranodon (Ornithostoma), made “from a specimen in the Yale University 
Museum.” , From my recollection of various peculiarities shown in the 
figure, as also from certain accidental peculiarities, such as the fracture 
of the infra-narial bar, faithfully reproduced in Professor Marsh’s drawings, 
I have very little hesitation in saying that the specimen there illustrated 
is the type of the genus P¢reranodon, upon which was based the figure so 
long current in text-books. Should I be in error in this identification, I 
shall be glad to be corrected, hoping, however, in that case, that a true 
figure of the type specimen may be published. 
In the summer of 1891, Professor E. C. Case and myself uncovered 
from the firm yellow chalk of western Kansas, the uninjured posterior 
part of a skull of Preranodon, with its sagittal-crest entire and evenly 
rounded. A figure of this specimen was given in Pl. I, Vol. I, of the 
Kansas University Quarterly, to which I beg to refer the reader. The 
specimen is now preserved on a slab in the museum of the University of 
Kansas, and I doubt not that the crest as disclosed from the matrix and 
as represented in the figure, is all that the animal possessed in life. Mr. 
G. F. Eaton, however, in the July number of the American Journal of 
Science takes me to task for criticising the original figures of Preranodon, 
which he admits were faulty, and for my “restoration” of the skull, assert- 
ing that I was wrong. He now adds to the type a much longer crest than 
did the author. The basis for Professor Marsh’s restoration is shown in 
Mr. Lucas’s plate, if my identification is correct, and the drawing has 
been faithfully made. 
