The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-04-28
SOUTH AFRICAN FOSSILS.
An Exceedingly Small Plesiosaurus-
 Other Extinct Reptiles.

An Exceedingly Small Plesiosaurus-
 Other Extinct Reptiles.
 The war has indirectly led to an ir- teresting scientific discovery in the Cape
 Colony. Two members of the Geologi- cal Survey there being driven away from their work on the northern from tier went to study the Uitenhage beds on the lower part of the Sunday river, which enters the sea In Algoa Bay. These beds were known to contain re- mains of reptiles, though little had hith- erto been found which could be iderti- fled with precision. But on this occa- sion the explorers were rewarded by discovering a number of fossil bones projecting from the hillsile, and evident ly those of reptile, for the vertebrae,, a paddle and jaws could be recognized. Other bones were subsequently, exhum- ed. Thirty-eight vertebrae have been obtained, and both the jaws, with their conical fluted teeth, those in front being the largest, with one, at least, of the limbs, which in shape bears some resem- blance to paddle.
 Professionally the skeleton Is referred to as the plesiosaurus. This reptile well known to European geologists-had a long neck its jaws were armed with formidable teeth, and rough idea of it's shape might be given by comparing it to a plucked swan, with paddles for limbs and a rather short tail. Capable of moving quickly through the water. and striking all about it with it's 1.-the neck and powerful mouth, it must have been no less terror to the fishes of the sea that it's contemporary the ichthyo- saurus, which, as it's name implies, was more like a fish in shape, had yet more terrible jaws, and must have rushed at its prey like shark. These scourges of the deep endured for long upon the globe-they would not be easily exter- minated Fine specimens of both have been found in these islands, in various strata, especially in the Oxford clay, near Peterborough, and in other parts of the Jurassic system, to which, in- deed these Uitenhage beds are referred.
 But if this South African creature be a true plesiosaurus, 1t was either a pyg- my species or its career was cut short in early youth; for 1t Is stated to be only four feet long. Now, in England though at their first appearance in the Lias they are comparatively small from eight to ten feet long-they have been known afterward to reach forty feet But allied genera have been iden- titled, and now the old genus plesiosau- rus is often subdivided, and that name restricted to the representatives found in the Lias and yet earlier part of the secondary deposits. That question, no doubt, will be determined when the re- mains can be carefully studied, but the old genus has been identified in Europe, Asia and America, and a not very re- mote relation has been unearthed even in New Zealand.
 South Africa has already. supplied ge- ologists with reptilia even more inter- esting than this, among them being a curious creature without teeth on the palate. Of two genera, formerly linked under the one name Dicynodon (from two great teeth, like canines), one oc- CUTS in India, another in South Africa, and representative has also been found in sandstones near Elgin, in Scot lands But the most genlarksble thing