330 BRITISH FOSSIL REPTILES. 



The locality where the first rightly recognised remains of the Mez/alosaurus were 

 found was Stonesfield, near Woodstock, about twelve miles from Oxford. The 

 formation is that calcareous schist, which, being quarried for roofing houses principally 

 at Stonesfield, is called, in most English geological works, " Stonesfield slate." Its 

 position is at the base of the great Middle Oolitic series, where it may be, perhaps, 

 more accurately classed as an upper member of the Inferior Oolite. 



To get at this slate, pits are sunk through forty-feet or more of superincumbent 

 strata, chiefly consisting of that hard oolitic rock called " cornbrash" by the quarry- 

 men. The schistose or slaty deposit is not more than six feet thick ; and the scepticism 

 with which the first announcement of bones of large animals in stony strata at that 

 depth was received, is exemplified by the stress with which Cuvier thought it needful 

 to insist on the fact that the Stonesfield slate was as regular a formation as it was an 

 ancient one, and that there was no groimd for supposing that the fossil bones which 

 it contained had penetrated it by any fissure or other accidental opening. 



The portions of skeleton originally discovered, and attributed by Dr. Buckland to 

 his newly defined genus, Megalosuurus, consisted of a fragment of the lower jaw, a 

 femur, a series of five vertebrae of the trunk, a few ribs, a coracoid bone, a clavicle, 

 and some less certainly recognisable fragments.* 



Unfortunately, as Cuvier has remarked, those portions were not found together in 

 one spot, nor, with the exception of the five vertebrae, were the bones associated two 

 to two, or three to three, so as to make it probable that they belonged to the same 

 individual ; and, with regard to their zoological or anatomical relations, Cuvier further 

 observes that these are of a somewhat equivocal and mixed nature, " encore ces 

 rapports zoologiques sont-ils dune nature assez equivoque et assez melangee."t 



This side-blow to Dr. Buckland's determination has been repeated by later foreign 

 palaeontologists. M. Deslongchamps, for example, has remarked, " Ou'il n'y a de bieu 

 decidement constate, comme Megalosaurus, que les dents ; car les autres pieces 

 osseuses, que Ton rattache a ce genre, y concordent a la verite par la taille et parce 

 qu'elles ont ete trouvee dans les memes bancs, mais non dans le meme bloc."| The 

 Megalosaurus, in fact, was not the only gigantic reptile which the Stonesfield slate was 

 then known to have contained ; but, up to the present time, it has been the sole 

 representative of the Dinosaurian order in that formation ; and the combination of the 

 characteristic modifications of the sacrum, scapular arch, and great limb-bones, 

 in skeletons of the same individual of the Iguanodon, and equally proved to coexist in 

 the Hylaeosaurus, has added greatly to the probability of the disjoined complex sacrum, 

 dorsal, and lumbar vertebrae, coracoid, and the large hollow femur, from the Stonesfield 



* ' Geological Transaction.*,' vol. i, 2d ser., p. 427. 

 + Tom. cit., p. ,'345. 

 + ' Sur le Poikilopleuron Buclilandi,' 4ti), p. .V2. 



