28 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



Phalanges are numerous throughout these remains, but I am 

 not in a position to differentiate between them. (PI. v., Figs. 6 

 and 7 ; PI. vii., Figs. 7-9). 



The shape of all, however, is particularly " hour-glass " like, 

 more so than in the majority of Plesiosaurian paddles, and most 

 of them are short, stout, and strong, with well marked articular 

 surfaces. As the smallest seen are much constricted, longer, 

 and have articular surfaces, the digits, like those in Mauisaurus, 

 "must have been enormously prolonged to produce such attenua- 

 tion."* 



The only evidence of a skull consists of four teeth (PL vii., Figs. 

 10 and 11). They are small, slender, acutely conical, and curved, 

 nearly circular in section from midway upwards, but possessing a 

 rather more oval section below. The enamel is delicately fluted, but 

 the teeth are not in the slightest degree carinate, as in Pliosaurtis 

 and Thaumatosaurus. None are quite perfect, but the most so, 

 although not the largest, measures thirteen-sixteenths of an inch 

 long by three-sixteenths in diameter at about the centre. The 

 largest fragment, on the other hand, has a diameter of two-eighths 

 of an inch. 



The genus Cimoliosaurus is divided by Lydekker into two 

 sections, the Coelospondyline and Typical Groups. In the former 

 the centra are excavated fore and aft, regularly ampliicrelus in 

 fact, but in the latter they are nearly flat. It follows from this 

 that C. leuoscopelus belongs to the Coelospondyli. Afauisaurus, 

 Hector, with which the White Cliffs reptile agrees in more than 

 one point, belongs to the Coelospondyli, and had it not been so, 

 as well as the marked difference in the vertebrae, I should have 

 been much inclined to consider C. leucoscopelus as closely allied 

 to Hector's fossil. 



An epitome of our scanty knowledge of the Australian Sauro- 

 pterygii will be found in the " Geology and Palaeontology of 

 Queensland."! Two species at least, perhaps three, are believed 

 to exist, and possibly both the former are referable to Cimolio- 

 saurus. They are Plesiosaurus macrospondylus, McCoy, and P. 

 sutherlmidi, McCoy. It is to be regretted that my friend, Mr. 

 R. Lydekker, in the British Museum " Catalogue, of Fossil Rep- 

 tilia and Amphibia,"! relied on a second-hand reference to these 

 forms, for although they have never been adequately described, 

 still, I think they deserve a better fate than mere relegation to 

 the limbo of MS. names. 



* Loc. cit,, p. 349. 



t Jack and Etheridge, Junr., 1890, pp. 508-9. 



t Pt. 2, 1889, p. 247. 



