_Eryops_, with several species in Texas and New Mexico. _E. megacephalus_ is the most abundant and the largest species, its broad and flattened skull measuring more than 18 inches in length and 12 in width. With the exception of the nostrils and the small orbits, the skull is entirely encased in bone, with a rough, pitted surface, but without any distinguishable sutures. The absence of mucous canals, so common in the Stegocephali, is worthy of note. The quadrates extend obliquely outwards and backwards, so that the joint with the mandible lies in a plane behind the occiput. The mandibles are devoid of a projecting angular process. The teeth are numerous, small, and pointed. The vertebrae are typically temnospondylous, consisting each of three pairs of separately ossified pieces, which, although closely packed together, are not suturally connected. The neural arches possess high spinous processes, they articulate by short and broad zygapophyses and are, with their triangular bases, wedged in between the two ventral pieces, the posterior of which (the united interventralia) is in broader contact with the neural arch and lies behind it; the anterior piece (the united basiventrals) appear as typical, but large, intercentra, and bear on their posterior, dorsal margin the facets for the ribs. The latter are short, but are broad at their proximal ends, which are not bifurcated; they extend their articulation from the "intercentra" upon the short lateral processes of the neural arches. The tail is short and ends in a pointed coccyx, owing to fusion of the last vertebrae. The pubes and ischia are heavy, the former flattened and broadened out. The limbs are of an almost ideal pentadactyloid type; strongly developed for terrestrial locomotion. The ulna possesses a large olecranon. The carpus consists of ten separate pieces, ulnare, intermedium, radiale, two centralia and five distal carpalia. The latter support only four metacarpals and fingers, the second finger being completely abolished, an explanation suggested by Cope and corroborated by Emery.[121]