The Medals of Creation, Volumes 1 and 2 / First Lessons in Geology and the Study of Organic Remains

by Gideon Algernon Mantell

Lign. 245. Cheirotherium Kaupii. ¹/₈ nat. size.
Casts of the foot-marks of a gigantic extinct Batrachian, probably a Labyrinthodon; with casts also of the cracks of the opposed surface.
Trias. Hessburg, near Hildburghausen, Saxony.

Fig.	1.—	Casts of the imprints of a hind and a fore-foot of the same animal.
	2.—	Similar tracks of another individual on the same stone.

Allusion has already been made to foot-prints, supposed to be those of tortoises (see p. 729), on slabs of Triassic sandstone in Scotland. Of these there are five species at Corncockle Muir, in Dumfriesshire: they are termed Chelichnus by Sir W. Jardine, who has lately described them in his Ichnology of Annandale, a splendid folio work, illustrated with full-sized lithographs, coloured after nature. They are accompanied with three other forms of footstep (Herpetichnus, Batrachnis, and Actibatis), one of which Sir W. Jardine regards as indicative of an animal probably of a saurian form.

At Grinsill quarry, from which the remains of the Rhynchosaurus (p. 712) were obtained, some small foot-prints have been observed, which, with some probability, have been referred to that animal (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1841, p. 146).

A beautifully distinct series of foot-prints, with the mark of a trailing tail, on a rippled slab from the New Red of Shrewley Common, Warwickshire, are figured and described by Strickland and Murchison (Geol. Trans. 2d ser. vol. v. pl. xvviii.). This ichnolite has been provisionally assigned by Professor Owen to Labyrinthodon leptognathus.[716] Similar impressions occur in company with other Cheirotherian imprints at Storeton Hill and at Grinshill.

[716] Geol. Trans. 2d ser. vol. vi. p. 525. The probable relations of Cheirotherium Hercules to Labyrinthodon Jægeri, and of Ch. Kaupii to L. pachygnathus, are pointed out by the same high authority, ibid. pp. 537, 538.

ON COLLECTING FOSSIL REPTILES.

On Collecting the Fossil Remains of Reptiles.—The length to which this article has extended, compels me to omit a retrospect of the geological distribution of fossil reptiles; and I must refer the reader to the brief review of the Age of Reptiles in Wond. p. 568, et seq., and Petrif. p. 147, &c., and close this chapter with some directions for collecting reptilian remains, and a list of a few British localities.[717]