REPTILIA: VARANOSAURUS 109 



been nearly straight. Altogether the foot, like the hand, was of 

 a rather swift-running terrestrial crawling animal, showing no 

 indications whatever of aquatic habits. 



Restoration (Frontispiece). — The mounted skeleton of Vara- 

 nosaurus, as shown in the photograph, is composed, save 

 the skull, almost exclusively of a single individual, of which the 

 bones were found in almost complete articulation from the frag- 

 mentary skull to the forty-seventh caudal vertebra. The left 

 hind foot was incomplete and has been restored from another 

 specimen, as also the right front foot, which is that of another 

 skeleton, the bones of the left front foot occurring in a more or less 

 disturbed condition. Several of the spines of the anterior dorsal 

 vertebrae were broken off and lost, as protruding from the block 

 of the matrix; they have been replaced by others from another 

 skeleton agreeing accurately with them save for the complete 

 spines. The figures of the plates, however, are made exclusively 

 from the original specimen. A number of the ribs in the mounted 

 skeleton are made of plaster-of-paris, copies of the real ribs found 

 in position, but which could not be extricated from the hard matrix 

 upon which they were lying without destroying them; three or 

 four of the most anterior ones are conjectural; these will be replaced 

 by real ribs, since discovered in other skeletons from this region. 

 The skull, as stated, is that of another skeleton, that to which the 

 third, fourth, fifth, and sixth vertebrae of the mounted skeleton 

 belongs. In mounting the skeleton, one of Varanus has been used 

 as a guide to the position. The hind legs have been placed more 

 forward than is usual in the skeletons of lizards, because of their 

 relative shortness, but the body has been left in a resting position 

 quite prone upon the base. The skeleton, as mounted, measures 

 just forty-four inches in length. 



RELATIONSHIPS OF VARANOSAURUS 



It is very evident that Varanosaurus is intimately related to 

 Poliosaurus Case and Poecilospondylus Case, the former very 

 imperfectly known, the latter known from a considerable part of 

 the skeleton. The present genus seems to be distinct from either, 

 especially in the shape of the vertebral centra, though I am not 



