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PALEONTOLOGY PALjEONTOLOGICAL interest, so far at least as vertebrated animals are concerned, is concentrated in Warwickshire on the remains of fishes, amphibians and reptiles from the Keuper division of the Trias, of which a splendid series are preserved in the museum at Warwick. Coten (or Colon) End, near Warwick, Shrewley, Cubbington and Leamington are well known localities for these fossils, many of which are peculiar to the county, while the others are restricted to a few localities in Britain. The amphibian remains belong to that early group known as labyrinthodonts, the more typical representatives of which are characterized by the peculiar and compli- cated infoldings of the outer layer of the crowns of their teeth, whereby a characteristic pattern is produced in the interior which is best dis- played in transverse section. The bones of the head, as well as those forming the chest-shield of these lowly creatures, are also characterized by a distinctive sculpture, recalling that on the skulls and scutes of modern crocodiles. The Warwick Museum is especially rich in the remains of these labyrinthodonts, which have been described by Huxley, Miall, Owen and others. Among the collectors of Warwickshire Triassic vertebrates may be especially mentioned the late Rev. P. B. Brodie, who published two papers in the Quarterly ^Journal of the Geological Society * on the fish and other remains from Shrewley and other localities. Com- mencing with the fish remains from the Keuper, the first form to be noticed is a shark originally described in 1840 by Murchison and Strickland on the evidence of teeth from Pendock in Worcestershire as Hybodus keuperinuS) but assigned in the British Museum Catalogue of Fossil Fishes 2 to the genus Acrodus, Similar teeth occur at Shrewley and Rowington. From the evidence of a hybodont spine from Shrewley, which may belong to the same form, Dr. A. S. Woodward 3 has recently expressed the opinion that this fish may have to be assigned to a distinct genus, under the name of Liacantbus. Of special interest is a much more primitive type of shark, belonging to the Palaeozoic group Ichthyotomi, described by Dr. Woodward 4 on the evidence of teeth obtained by Mr. Brodie from Shrewley under the name of Phcebodus brodiei. Another tooth is known from the Worcestershire Keuper. 6 From the Keuper 1 Vol. xliii. 540 (1887), and xlix. 171 (1893). 2 Part i. p. 281. 3 Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 6, xii. 283 (1893). 4 Op. cit. 6 In the ' Palaeontology ' of Worcestershire it is stated that only two teeth are known. 29