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The fore-brain or cerebrum, in particular, is so small that it does not cover the cerebellum. Like these, the Monotremes have a strongly developed caracoideum. From these and other less prominent characteristics it follows absolutely that the Monotremes occupy the lowest place among the Mammals, and represent a transitional group between the Tocosauria and the rest of the Mammals.

Homoeosaurus pulchellus, a Jurassic proreptile from Kehlheim. The instructive group of the Permian Tocosauria, the common root from which the divergent stems of the Sauropsids and mammals have issued, merits our particular attention as the stem-group of all the Amniotes.

The teeth also are already divided into incisors, canines, and molars. Nevertheless, it is very doubtful whether the Theromorpha really are in the ancestral line of the Sauromammals, or lead direct from the Tocosauria to the earliest Mammals.

Unfortunately, the numerous fossil remains of Permian and Triassic Tocosauria that we have found in the last two decades are, for the most part, very imperfectly preserved. Very often we can make only precarious inferences from these skeletal fragments as to the anatomic characters of the soft parts that went with the bony skeleton of the extinct Tocosauria.