The Coal Measures Amphibia of North AmericaMoodie, Roy Lee
Science
The Coal Measures Amphibia of North America
Moodie, Roy Lee
Amphibians, Fossil -- North America; Paleontology -- Carboniferous; Paleontology -- North America
The form discovered by Dr. Gergens and described by Hermann von Meyer as
an amphibian is a little puzzling as to its characters. Miall (449, p.
183) says that the remains are too imperfect for close definition. The
form, as figured, resembles an immature branchiosaurian, as one is at once
reminded, from an examination of Von Ammon's _Branchiosaurus caducus_ (7,
Taf. IV, fig. 1). In 1844 Dr. Alfred King (356) announced the discovery of
"reptilian" footprints in the Carboniferous of Pennsylvania.
The next announcement of fossil Amphibia was made by Goldfuss (296), who
in 1847 described the famous _Archegosaurus_ from the upper Carboniferous
of Germany, from the remains which had as long ago as 1777 been
regarded as a fish. Two years later Isaac Lea (371) announced to the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, through Buckland,
the discovery of footprints in the old Red Sandstone (Mauch Chunk) of
Pennsylvania. These objects occur not rarely in the Mauch Chunk shales,
which are of upper Mississippian age. Barrell (21, p. 460) records the
finding of imperfect tracks in the same beds, and Rogers (Geology of
Pennsylvania, pt. II, 1856, p. 831) records three unnamed varieties from
2,200 feet below the top of the Mauch Chunk. Branson (50) has recorded
the finding of other amphibian footprints from the Mississippian of Giles
County, Virginia.
Lyell and Dawson (396), in 1853, read a paper before the Geological
Society of London, in which they announced the discovery of remains of
Amphibia in the Coal Measures of North America, although Dawson had
previously, in 1850, discovered the skull of _Baphetes planiceps_ Owen,
which was not described until the latter part of 1853 (509). The specimen
had lain unnoticed in the collection of the Geological Society for more
than two years. When, however, the announcement was made by Lyell and
Dawson of the discovery of Amphibia in the Coal Measures of Nova Scotia,
so much interest was excited that the skull, now known as _Baphetes
planiceps_, was brought to light by the president or secretary and was
described (509) by Sir Richard Owen. The only other known evidences of
land vertebrates in the Paleozoic of North America, up to this time, had
been the footprints described by Lea and King from the Mississippian
(Mauch Chunk) and Pennsylvanian of Pennsylvania. The specimens presented
to the Geological Society of London by Lyell and Dawson were found at the
South Joggins, Nova Scotia, and consisted of scutes, a few limb bones, a
fragment of a jaw, and a few vertebræ, a part of which were associated.
The remains were found quite accidentally and unexpectedly by them in
the petrified trunks of ancient Sigillariæ which were exposed on the
coast. Dr. Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard College, had examined these remains
in the United States and had pronounced (638) them to be amphibian,
comparing them with similar elements in _Menobranchus_. On the arrival
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