The first part of the following account of the species, Macrerpeton huxleyi Cope, is a quotation of Cope's description ([123]) of the type specimen, and the second part deals with the description of the new material. Cope says the species is
"Represented by a considerable portion of the face and muzzle of a single individual. A portion of the left mandible, supporting three teeth, remains in place, and almost the entire boundary of the right orbit is preserved.
"The fragment indicates a much larger species than any other referred to the genus, and, next to the Leptophractus obsoletus, the largest of the Batrachians of the Ohio Coal Measures. Without more complete remains, it is not easy to determine its generic relations finally.
"The form of the head is probably elongate, and the muzzle neither very obtuse nor elongate. The orbit is rather small, and near the middle of the length of the specimen, which is, however, incomplete at both ends. The sculpture of the surface of the head posterior to the orbits, as well as round their borders and for some distance in front of them, consists of a rather coarse pitting. On the middle line, between the orbits and on the muzzle, the intervals become narrower, and are confluent into transverse ridges or a delicate reticulation. The surface of the mandible displays a coarse reticulation.
"The teeth are stoutly conic, and with delicately striate grooved cementum. They are slightly recurved.
"This species differs from the T. radiatus and T. obtusus in the absence of the area into which the sculpture is thrown.
"Longitudinal diameter of orbit, 19 mm.; length of alveolar border supporting three teeth, 13 mm.; diameter of base of tooth, 3 mm.; eight pits in 10 mm.
"Dedicated to Professor T. H. Huxley, facile princeps among English systematists, and an important contributor to the knowledge of the extinct Batrachia."
The following discussion of the cranial elements, based on the writer's studies ([462], [465]) of the type, may be appended to Professor Cope's original description. The sutures bounding a few of the elements have been made out in part. The prefrontal element seems well assured. It lies well in front of the orbit, much as in the skull of Capitosaurus from the Keuper of Europe. The lacrimal is, apparently, a very large bone, though its entire extent is not assured.