(1) A Complete Mosasaur's Skeleton and (2) A Skeleton of Diplodocus

Abstract

THE memoirs above-mentioned are the latest of a series which, though not yet in their second volume, have already taken their place in the foremost rank of zoological publications. For this praiseworthy result the world is largely indebted to the author of the present memoirs, through his great monograph on “The Extinct Rhinoceroses”—the third in order of succession to appear. That came to those cognisant of his rich resources and familiar with his former doings as the fulfilment, of a desire, and in itself set a high standard of excellence. In the memoirs under review this has been fully maintained, both as regards text and illustrations, which are alike highly finished works of art, worthy a pupil of Huxley. The two sets of remains dealt with are equally remarkable—one for the fact that parts usually lost by decomposition after death are here preserved; the other as furnishing us, for the first time in an undisturbed state, with well-nigh half the axial skeleton of a colossus, whose backbone was hitherto known only by some few isolated vertebræ.

(1) A Complete Mosasaur's Skeleton and (2) A Skeleton of Diplodocus.

Being Parts iv. and v. of vol. i. of “Memoirs” of the American Museum of Natural History. By H. F. Osborn. With 8 Plates and 28 Text Illustrations. (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1899.)