Notices of Memoirs

Extract

In the spring of the present year M. Albert Gaudry communicated an interesting paper to the Geological Society of France, on some newly discovered remains of true Batrachia found in the older rocks of that country, and which paper has just been published, with two plates, in their Proceedings. This discovery is paléontologically important; as the author observes that up to the present time no remains of actual typical Batrachia have been found in any rocks of earlier date than the Tertiary Period. It has also been a subject of surprise, that Vertebrates of so low an organization should have appeared so late upon the earth, and this supposed faot has been used as an objection to the theory of progressive development. However, this discovery, he thinks, shows structural characters, such as an evolutionist would expect to find in an ancient rock. The tail very short, the bones of the trunk and limbs resembling those of the Salamanders, whilst on the contrary the bones of the head have the characters of those of the Frog; thus lessening the distance which appears to separate the Urodela from the Anoura. He further remarks, that the incomplete ossification of the centra of the vertebræ, the want of ossification of the epyphyses of the limb bones, and probably, also, the cartilaginous state of the carpals and tarsals, reveal a type of which the evolution is not yet completed.