ASSOCIATION NEWS

1895 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)  
remaining bones was sent to the Director of the National Museum at Washington, and the following reply has been re¬ ceived by me : "The matter is one of great interest from a paleontológi¬ ca! point of view, and I have taken the liberty of at once submitting your letter to the Director of the Smithsonian Institution, asking him to write you in regard to the matter and send a qualified paleontologist to investigate the dis¬ covery, classify or coin a name for it, and obtain it. The skeleton you
more » ... peak of is certainly larger than any on record anywhere in the world and it is highly important that it should be preserved in the National Museum." It has been named by local scientists monocerosichthysaurus and plesiosaurus. It evidently belongs to neither. By com¬ parisons with descriptions, and from recollections of the larger casts of fossil saurians, the head and vertebras belong to neither of them. The eye sockets are four feet in diame¬ ter, with the supra-orbital notch th'e same as in the human cranium, with a space of twenty inches between the sockets, making the diameter of the skull nine feet and eight inches, with a small brain cavity comparatively. The vertebras measures twelve inches each way, and the distance from tip to tip of the transverse processes is forty inches, and resem¬ bles those of a mammal rather than a fish. The os hyoïdes is thirty-eight inches long, a rib thirteen feet eight inches long, circumference thirty-three inches, and two triangularshaped bones corresponding to right and left, three and onehalf by twelve feet, the use of which is conjectured, but sup¬ posed to be propellers or fins. Local scientists who have expressed an opinion, and many have examined it, do not pretend to name it and believe it to belong to no recorded species. It has been variously esti¬ mated to have been from sixty to three hundred feet long. I think the latter more nearly correct. Yours truly, R. L. Patterson, M.D.
doi:10.1001/jama.1895.02430170035018 fatcat:kyoqrdnngnfalasg5huwfraoai