Notes

Abstract

AT a meeting of the London Section of the Deutsche Kolonial-Gesellschaft on May 11, Dr. A. Smith Woodward gave an address on the significance of the recent discoveries of Cretaceous Dinosauria in German East Africa. Since 1909 excavations have been in progress in the Tendaguru Hills, under the immediate supervision of Prof. W. Janensch and Dr. E. Hennig, and an appeal is now being made for funds to proceed with a fourth year's work. In describing the results, so far as he had seen them in the Berlin Museum, Dr. Woodward emphasised the importance of an exhaustive comparison of the sauropodous dinosaurs of Africa with those of North America, which would now soon be possible. He also alluded to the problems suggested by the gigantic size of some species, which much exceeded the extreme limit of growth calculated to be possible by the late Prof. Marsh when he first discovered the femur of Atlantosaurus. Prof. W. Branca sent for exhibition to the meeting a plaster cast of the humerus of Gigantosaurus, 2-10 metres in length, which is shortly to be placed in the British Museum (Natural History); while Prof. Janensch lent an important series of photographs which he had taken at different stages during the excavations. The German society is to be congratulated on its enlightened interest in purely scientific work undertaken in a colonial possession, and English science will appreciate the compliment paid to one of its exponents by his being invited to deliver the address in question.