zonlngical Journal of the Linnean Society ( 1984), 82: 1

Foreword

This double number of the zoological Journal of the Linnean Soci?Q is dedicated to Professor Kenneth Kermack, University College London, on his retirement in September 1984. The contributors include a dozen of his past students, whose interests cover the whole sphere of vertebrates, and some of Kenneth’s associates in his special field of Mesozoic mammals. The doyen of that field, George Gaylord Simpson, has written an introductory appreciation of Kenneth and his work. Several of the papers published here were read at the 32nd Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, held at University College London in September 1984.

I t is appropriate that the Linnean Society, and this journal, should publish a Festschrift for Kenneth Kermack. He and Doris, his wife and collaborator, have long been Fellows, staunch supporters of the Society and its meetings. Together, the Kermacks edited a Linnean symposium volume on early mammals, published as a supplement to this journal (Kermack & Kermack, 1971), and the journal has published Kenneth’s opera magna, the fruits of almost 30 years’ work on Morganucodon, the best known of all Mesozoic mammals (Kermack et al., 1973, 1981). ‘Tony Lee, who illustrated those monographs, has made the sensitive portrait of Kenneth overleaf. The two other members of the University College team, Frances Mussett and Pat Lees, are here not in print but in spirit, and I am most grateful to them for their help in planning the volume.

Because of the limited space available here, and the constraints of time, not all thc papers intended for this Festschrift could be included. The missing papers, which will appear in subsequent numbers of the journal, include: A. W. Crompton (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard Univerljity) & Ai-Lin Sun (Institute of Paleontology, Bcijing), ‘Cranial structure and relationships of the Liassic mammal Sinoconodon’; Mi. A. Clemens (University of California, Bcrkeley), ‘The fossil record of the oldest primates’; P. L. Forey [British Museum (Natural History)] & B. G. Gardiner (Queen Eliz,lbeth College, London), ‘Observations on Ctenurelln (Ptyctodontida) and the c-lassification of placoderni fishes’; and C. Patterson [British Museum (Natural History)], ‘A clupeomorph fish from the Lower Cretaceous of Queensland, Australia’.

COLIN PATTERSON

REFERENCES

KEKMACK, D. M. & KERMACK, K. A. (Eds), 1971. Early mammals. znnlog~calJoitrnalnfIhe Linnean Sncieg,

KERMACK, K . A,, MUSSETT, F. & RIGNEY, H. LV., 1973. The lower jaw of Mni;ganucndnn. Znologzcal

KEKMACK, K. A., MUSSETT, F. & RIGNEY, H. LV., 1981. The skull ofhforganucodnn. zoologicalJourna1 of

20. Suppl. 1: xiv+ 1-203.

Journal ofthe Linnean Society, 53: 87-1 75.

the Lznrrean Society, 71: 1-158.

0024-4082/84/090001+ 0 1 $03.00/0 1 0 1984 The Linnean Society of London