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IV.— A Letter from Dr. Harlan, addressed to the President, on the Discovery of the Remains of the Basilosaurus or Zeuglodon.

1841; Geological Society of London; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1144/transgslb.6.1.67

2058-1041

Harlan Harlan,

Evolution and Paleontology Studies

WITH your permission, and at the request of several Members, I offer a few observations on the fossil bones from the United States now on the table.In the early part of the year 1832 a large fossil vertebra was presented to the American Philosophical Society by Judge Bree of Louisiana, found-in the " marly" banks of the Washita river, Arkansas territory.We then ventured to consider it as the vertebra of a large extinct Saurian of a nondescript genus, and proposed to name it provisionally Basilosaurus; the matrix contained a species of fossil Corbula, common in the Alabama tertiary deposits ;-these remarks were not published until 1834.In the autumn of the same year a box of similar bones was received from the Hon.Mr. Creagh, from his plantation in Alabama, containing several enormous vertebrae, an os humeri, portions of the jaws and teeth, and some other fragments, supposed to belong to the same animal.Specimens of Nautilus, Scutella, and Modiolus, of extinct and new species, together with some fossil Shark's teeth, were obtained at the same time, from a similar rock in the vicinity.The great disparity in the proportional size of the different bones, which are all destitute of animal matter, presents a remarkable feature in the structure of this animal; so much so indeed, that we were at first disposed to refer the large and small vertebrae to different species; and one rib, obtained at the same time, is evidently that of a fossil Manatus.Bearing in view the form and structure of the teeth only, we should have been inclined to have ranked the animal amongst the marine Carnivora, however unlike those organs in any known species ; but a careful examination of the other portions of the skeleton, especially of the lower jaw, which is elongated and hollow, appeared to forbid this arrangement, and to characterize it as a lost genus of the saurian order.The immense size and proportions of the vertebrae, and the total length of the vertebral column in the two skeletons-the one noticed at Alabama, the other at Arkansas-^being estimated, London, January 9, 1839.