Zsivny Viktor (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 30. (Budapest 1936)
Fejérváry, G. J.: Notes on a very little-known lizard: Lacerta princeps Blanf., with description of the male specimen preserved in the Vienna Natural History Museum
or speculations, constituting the inferential substance of his investigations into the organization of the Lacertidae. What 1 wish to remark now is, that the fontanel by no means represents an ancestral feature of the Lacertid skull, nor does it figure in the course of ontogenetical development as a recapitulation of some earlier euthygenetical stage, but quite simply arises in consequence of a process dependent on, and histogenetically implied by, the formation itself of the respective parts of the cranial skeleton. There is no bearing upon moments of super- or trans-individual, i. e. phyletic, importance to be deciphered from, out this developmental character. The fontanel is not archaic at all, a fact correctly pointed out, already some twenty years ago, by BOULENGER. 7 Only, of course, the way of arguing BOULENGER has followed, did not prove to be, even two decades ago, up to date, for most of the ideas upon which he based his criticisms were of a rather antiquated dash, and did not afford any really convincing and adequately produced evidence to the very credit of his criticism's correctness. I wish to emphasize, in this place and for the first time, that the Lacertid fontanel, occurring on the supraciliary lamina, constitutes an exact parallel to the fronto-parietal fontanel characteristic of any Human babe, and persisting until the limit of incipient puberty. Not more and not less so than in the case of the Human fontanel, the Lacertid fontanel may be said a „primitive" feature. Nobody ever thought of inferring, from the existence of a fontanel in juvenile Men, that the presence of such character is an expression of the Biogenetical Law T (established by E. A. R. SERRES), and that, hence, this fontanel might be looked upon as constituting an ancestral peculiarity characteristic of some remote member of the Human chain of descent. Au fond, the fontanel is a subembryonic character, and its prolongated postembryonic persistance and slow rate of disappearance are merely due to a retardative development of the individual. Precisely that is which obtains in Man, and in such instance we are facing a degenerative, instead of an ancestral, character. And degeneration marks, phylogenetically, a much advanced degree of development on that special line of Evolution which represents the Biohistory of the organismic scale concerned. Through the ingenious research done by L. BOLK, we also learned, some years ago, that many are the typically „human'* characteristics that simply consist in a definitive post-embryonic 7 Ann, Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. VIII., vol. V., 1910, p. 252.
