432 BRITISH FOSSIL REPTILES. 



from a Crocodilus biporcatus, with the same-sized cervical vertebrae, it is a somewhat 

 thicker and stronger bone (see p. 102). It has a broader and thicker ulnar 

 tuberosity, and the angle at which the process is bent down upon the shaft is less 

 marked, more rounded off. The radial crest is a triangular, compressed ridge, but 

 is not produced beyond four lines from the surface of the shaft ; the distal part of 

 the bone is proportionally thicker antero-posteriorly than in the modern Crocodiles, 

 and the longitudinal, irregular ridges at the margin of the articular surface are 

 stronger ; there is a similar ridge above the inner condyle. 



The femur of the Goniopholis (PI. 13, o) is relatively longer, and is less bent 

 than in the existing Gavial or Crocodile. The tibia {m and », the latter bone 

 presenting its narrower side to view) is also both longer and thicker. 



Dermal Scutes (Plates 9 and 13). 



In the slab of Wealden stone from Cuckfield, containing the parts of the dislocated 

 skeleton shown in PI. 13, there were imbedded, not only the long, quadrate, toothed 

 scutes (a, b), like those in the Purbeck slab (Pis. 7 and 8), but a second form of scute 

 (PI. 13, d,d), of which no examples had been preserved in the Purbeck specimen. 

 These scutes are hexagonal, marked as in the toothed kind, on the outer surface, by 

 hemispheric, circular or subcircular pits, and on the inside by fine, linear, decussating 

 lines on an otherwise smooth and plane surface (PI. 9, fig. 2). They have no articulat- 

 ing process, but have a strongly marked sutural surface on the thick margin (ib., 

 fig. 5), showing tliem to have been united together, like the neural and costal plates 

 of the carapace, and like the elements of the plastron, in the terrapene and tortoise. 



From the association of hexagonal sutural scutes with the quadrate, oblong, 

 toothed scutes in the specimen (PI. 13), it can hardly be doubted that they formed 

 part of the same exo-skeleton. But to what part of such skeleton each kind was 

 appropriated cannot be determined until more complete examples are discovered. 



In the sixth part of the sixth volume of the ' Palseontographica' of H. v. Meyer, 

 the author has described and figured part of the dermal skeleton of what he believes 

 to have been a Saurian reptile, consisting of bony plates, for the most part hexagonal 

 and united by marginal sutures. These plates, however, do not present the uniformly 

 pitted character of the external surface, as in Goniopholis ; but here and there in the 

 series they show a few irregular, large depressions ; the more constant markings 

 are smaller, apparently vascular foramina, and linear, usually radiated, impressions in 

 character more like the markings of the dermal ossifications of the Labyrinthodont 

 reptiles. The specimen described is from the " dachsteinkalk," under the Winkel- 

 maass Alpe, near Ruhpalding, in Bavaria, and it is referred to the Psephoderma 

 Alpinum. 



