Science Progress Volume 1, Pp. 365-556

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...This, however, is not all relating to this group, for Mr. C. W. Gilmore, who published a memoir on the osteology of the American fish-lizard commonly known as Baptanodon in the Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, in 1905, has communicated a further notice of the osteology of the genus in a later issue of that serial (ii. art. 9, 1906), in which he describes a new species. In referring to the plates in the sclerotic of the eye, this author states that their mode of articulation admits of a certain amount of contraction and expansion in the bony ring. Mr. Gilmore still maintains the distinctness of Baptanodon from the European Ophthalmosaurus, although admitting the occurrence of a representative of the latter in American strata. Next to that on the Phytosauria, perhaps the most important memoir on fossil reptiles issued during the period under review is one by Mr. B. Brown on the Upper Cretaceous genus Champsosaurus, published in the Memoirs of the American Museum (ix. part 1, December 1905). The genus has often been placed in the Rhynchocephalia, as the representative of a special suborder--Choristodera. In the author's opinion that group is, however, considered worthy of ordinal rank. "Champsosaurus" he writes, "cannot be considered ancestral to the Rhynchocephalia proper, because it is already a long-nosed type derived from a short-nosed form. It has lost the notochord. The pterygoids are highly specialised, compressed, and extended backwards and forwards, completely obscuring the basisphenoid, while the ethmoid is developed in front of the prevomers. Although similar in many characters to Sphenodon, this similarity emphasises rather the very persistent primitive features of Sphenodon." Why these admittedly specialised characte...