Page:North American Plesiosaurs- Elasmosaurus, Cimoliasaurus, and Polycotylus.pdf/1

Rh XVI. — North American Plesiosaurs: Elasmosaurus, Cimoliasaurus, and Polycotylus; by S. W.. (With Plates I-IV.)

the past two years I have had the opportunity of studying nearly all the specimens of preserved in the, a study undertaken in the preparation of a  revision of the American forms, and, it is hoped, of the  of the world also. The accumulation, however, of material recently has made the completion of the task a more arduous one than was at first suspected. I have therefore determined to publish from time to time the more important results obtained, with the hope eventually of gathering the whole together in a final monographic revision. Furthermore, I am convinced that specimens of this order of are not as rare in America as has been believed, and hope to continue field search until the more important characters of the group have been established. I have already said, and I repeat, that the of the plesiosaurs is very perplexing; I doubt if that of any other order of reptiles is more so, chiefly because of the fragmentary nature of much of the known material.

I desire in this place to express my sincerest thanks to those gentlemen who have generously aided me by the communication of material under their charge, and in particular to Dr. Witmer Stone of the, Professor Henry F. Osborn of the , President Slocum and Professor Cragin of , and to my old friend, Mr. William H. Reed, curator of paleontology of the. I am especially grateful for the generosity with which Professor Charles Schuchert, the curator of the Geological Department of the, has placed freely at my disposal the rich collections of that museum, collections which I had, for the most part, assisted in making a good many years ago; and to which were added many useful notes made by the late Professors Marsh and Baur, and by myself while an assistant in that museum twenty years or more ago. Professor Marsh had begun, before his death, the critical study of the plesiosaur material of the Yale Museum, and had had much of it prepared and some illustrations made. All of this has been placed at my disposal. Professor Marsh had not definitely determined any of his species, and had only tentatively located some of them in genera, aside from the species described by him as . Most of the

, Vol. XXI. No. 123—, 1906.

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