38 EXTINCT MONSTERS. 



The remains of fish-lizards have attracted the attention of 

 collectors and describers of fossils for nearly two centuries past. 

 The vertebrae, or " cup-bones," as they are often called, of which 

 the spinal column was composed, were figured by Scheiichzer, 

 in an old work entitled Quet-elce Pisciuni ; and, at that time, 

 they were supposed to be the vertebrae of fishes. In the 

 year 1814 Sir Everard Home described the fossil remains of 

 this creature, in a paper read before the Royal Society, and 

 published in their Philosophical Trajisadions. This fossil was 

 first discovered in the Lias strata of the Dorsetshire coast. Other 

 papers followed till the year 1820. We are chiefly indebted to 

 De la Beche and Conybeare for pointing out and illustrating the 

 nature of the fish-lizard ; and that at a time when the materials 

 for so doing were far more scanty than they are now. Mr. Charles 

 Konig, Mr. Thomas Hawkins, Dean Buckland^ Sir Philip Egerton, 

 and Professor Owen have all helped to throw light on the structure 

 and habits of these old tyrants of the seas of that age, which is 

 known as the Jurassic period. They lived on, however, to the 

 succeeding or Cretaceous period, during which our English chalk 

 was forming; but the Liassic age was the one in which they 

 flourished most abundantly, and developed the greatest variety. 



In the year 18 14 a few bones were found on the Dorsetshire 

 coast between Charmouth and Lyme-Regis, and added to the 

 collection of Bullock. They came from the Lias cliffs, under- 

 mined by the encroaching sea. Sir Everard's attention being 

 attracted to them, he published the notices already referred to. 

 The analogy of some of the bones to those of a crocodile, induced 

 Mr. Konig, of the British Museum, to believe the animal to have 

 been a saurian, or lizard ; but the vertebra;, and also the position 

 of certain openings in the skull, indicated some remote afifinity 

 with fishes, but this must not be pressed too far. The choice 

 of a name, therefore, involved much difficulty ; and at length 

 he decided to call it the Ichthyosaurus^ or fish-lizard. Mr. 

 Johnson, of Bristol, who had collected for many years in that 



