XX. Description of an Extinct Lacertian Reptile, Rhynchosaurus arti- 

 ceps, Owen, of which the Bones and Foot-prints characterize the 

 Upper New Red Sandstone at Grinsill, near Shrewsbury. By 

 Richard Owen, F. R. S., G. S. &f., Hunterian Professor in the 

 Royal College of Surgeons. 



[Read April 11, 1842.] 



The existence of a small four-footed animal, at the period of the depo- 

 sition of the New Red Sandstone near Shrewsbury, was announced by 

 Dr. Ogier Ward of that city, at the meeting of the British Association at 

 Birmingham ; the evidence then brought forward consisting of foot-prints 

 only. These Ichnolites most nearly resembled those figured in the Memoir 

 on the New Red Sandstone of Warwickshire, by Messrs. Murchison 

 and Strickland*, but differed in giving more distinct indications of the 

 terminal claws, and less distinct impressions of the connecting web : the 

 innermost toe is more diminutive, and there is an impression, always at 

 a definite distance from the fore-toes, like a hind-toe pointing backwards, 

 and which seems to have only touched the ground by its point, as in some 

 wading birds : reminding one of the form of some of the Ichnolites dis- 

 covered by Dr. Hitchcock, in the New Red Sandstone at Connecticut, 

 which have been referred to the class of birds. 



Any evidence of a warm-blooded and quick-breathing class of animals 

 at so remote a period as the New Red Sandstone epoch requires to be 

 very closely sifted, and the chance of obtaining any analogical facts, 

 bearing upon the explanation of the * Ornithicnites' of Professor Hitchcock, 

 induced me to spare no exertions to obtain further insight into the 

 problematical creature of the Grinsill quarries. 



* Geological Transactions, Second Series, Vol. V. pi. xxviii. . 



