. Carnegie Institution of Washington publication. 20O THE COAL MEASURES AMPHIBIA OF NORTH AMERICA. was published in the Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science and later copied in the American Journal of Science. Professor Marsh's description (406) of the remains is as follows: ' The impressions are well preserved in a calcareous shale, which separates readily into thin slabs, each representing a surface of the beach at the time the footprints were made upon it. A few shells in the shale are sufficient to prove that the formation is marine (no shells are evident in the slab at the Museum


. Carnegie Institution of Washington publication. 20O THE COAL MEASURES AMPHIBIA OF NORTH AMERICA. was published in the Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science and later copied in the American Journal of Science. Professor Marsh's description (406) of the remains is as follows: ' The impressions are well preserved in a calcareous shale, which separates readily into thin slabs, each representing a surface of the beach at the time the footprints were made upon it. A few shells in the shale are sufficient to prove that the formation is marine (no shells are evident in the slab at the Museum of the University of Kansas, but the slab is quite arenaceous). Trails of annelids, or perhaps of other invertebrates, are seen on some of the surfaces. The footprints of vertebrate animals, however, are of paramount importance, and the large number and variety of these here recorded on a single surface, if they could be rightly interpreted, would form an interesting chapter of land vertebrate life in the Carboniferous, about which so little is at present ; Professor Marsh's description of Dromopns agilis is as follows: " The third series of footprints is of special interest, and indicates an animal very distinct from the two already described. The diagram rep- resents the impression of the phalanges sufficiently in de- tail to indicate (406) their number and general form. A striking feature in the fore and hind feet of this animal was the long, slender digits terminated by sharp claws. Another point of interest, as recorded in the footprints, is that the animal in walking swung the hind feet outward, and so near the ground that the ends of the longer toes sometimes made trails in the mud, marking accurately F]C ;nts of Dromopus agilis Marsh, from the Coal Measures of the sweep of the foot. This Osage County, Kansas. Original slab in University of Kansas Museum. would seem to indicate a comparatively short hind leg, rather than the long, slender one w


Size: 1888px × 1324px
Photo credit: © Book Worm / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: ., bookauthorcarnegie, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1902