Pterodai-tjlc. 



Ignanodon. 



DINOSAUKIANS. 

 Hylaeosaurus. 



Megalosaurus. 



Teier 



GEOLOGICAL RESTORATIO1 



Tlie science of Palaeontology treats of the history of fossils, and its principal object is to make known the forms an 

 zoological relations of the beings which have inhabited the globe at various epochs anterior to our own. This scien< 

 furnishes the only certain basis for the determination of the stratified rocks, and for clearing up several essential poin 

 relative to the ancient limits of seas and continents. The presence of fossils of species which belong to the kinds essei 

 tially fluviatile, serve to indicate the existence of land and river courses; whilst fossils of marine species prove, on tl 

 contrary, that the strata where they are deposited have been formed either near to or far from the coasts of seas i 

 different epochs An inspection of the various strata hi which fossils have been deposited shows that, in general, 

 constant order has existed in their formation. The sea, by which the earth appears to have been covered, bavin 

 rested in certain situations a sufficient length of time to deposit particular strata, and to sustain the life of certai 

 genera and species of animals, has undergone change; the animals of each period have become extinct, and bee 

 successively replaced by other forms of life equally adapted to the changed conditions, whose remains are found in ea< 

 stratum, and are generally limited to, and characteristic of, one formation, although the mineral character may n< 

 always be the same. 



Of the two great classes of life, the vertebrate and invertebrate, the latter are more abundant than the former; ar 

 the forms belonging to the sea far more numerous than those of freshwater. If we divide the three great series 

 stratified rocks by the forms of vertebrate life occurring in them, we shall find that Fishes characterize the primar; 

 Reptiles the secondary; and Mammalia the tertiary series. Of some of these we shall offer a few illustrations. 



In the primary series, the prominent vertebrate forms were fishes belonging to tribes but feebly represented In 01 

 present seas. Two genera of reptiles only have yet been met with in them, these are the Telerpeton from tl 

 Devonian beds of Scotland, and the Archegosaurus from the coal measures. 



The diagram is intended to illustrate the restoration! of the more remarkable forms of reptile life, whose remains a 

 found in those formations which constitute the secondary epoch. The illustration is partly copied from a sketch 1 

 Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, F.G.S., to whose genius and industry the restorations of these animals at the Crystal Palai 

 are due. With the lower secondary p3riod or Trias, appeared new forms of reptilian life, -the Capitosaurus, Noth 

 saurus, and Labyrinthodon. For soms time impressions of foot prints only had been observed on some sandstoni 

 belonging to the trias of Cheshire, and to which, from their form, the term Chirothcrium was applied, iintil Professi 

 Owen investigated and showed that the remains of the teeth and bones found in this deposit in Warwickshire, belongt 

 to a reptile allied to the Batrachian order, and from the peculiar structure of its teeth it has been named tl 

 LABYRINTHODON, and to which the footmarks were probably due. 



* Next in ascending order we have the group of Enaliosaurians or sea lizards, reptiles with back bones somewh 

 resembling those of fishes, and from the structure of the air passage leading to the nostrils, they must have breaths 



LONDON: PUBLISHED 



