CHAPTER III. 



PART II. 

 FOSSIL REPTILES. 



AGB OF REPTILES FOSSIL BONES OF REPTILES FOSSIL TURTLES^PI ATEMYS 

 CHELONIA HARVICENSIS CHELONIA BRF.VICEPS WEALDEN TURTLES CHE- 

 LONIA BELLII EMYDIANS TRETOSTERNUM BAK.EWELLI. 



THE AGE OF REPTILES. The announcement of the illus- 

 trious Founder of Palaeontology, that there was a period when 

 the lakes and rivers of our planet were peopled by reptiles, 

 and cold-blooded ogriparous quadrupeds of appalling magni- 

 tude were the principal inhabitants of the dry land, when 

 the seas swarmed with saurians exclusively adapted for a 

 marine existence, and the regions of the atmosphere were 

 traversed by winged lizards instead of birds, was an enuncia- 

 tion so novel and startling, as to require the prestige of tlie 

 name of CUVIER to obtain for it any degree of attention or 

 credence, even from those who were sufficiently enlightened 

 to perceive that a universal deluge would not account for the 

 mutations which the surface of the earth and its inhabitants 

 had, in the lapse of innumerable ages, undergone. 1 



Subsequent discoveries have, however, established the truth, 

 of this proposition to an extent beyond what even its pro- 

 mulgator could have surmised ; and the " Age of Reptiles " 2 is 

 now admitted into the category of established facts. 



1 " Nous remontons done a un autre age du monde ; a cet age oil la 

 terre n'etoit encore parcoume que par des reptiles & sang froid oil la 

 merabondoit en ammonites, en belemnites, en tre"bratules, en encri- 

 nites, et ou tous ces genre?, aujourd'hui d'une rarete prodigieuse, faisoient 

 le fond de sa population/' Ossemens Fossiles, torn. v. p. 10. 



2 "The Age of Reptiles" was the title given by the author to a 

 popular summary of the evidence bearing on this question, which was 

 published in the Edinburgh PhilosophicalJournal for 1831. The name, 

 as now generally employed, comprises those geological epochs which are 

 characterized by the predominance of oviparous quadrupeds, viz. from 

 the Trias to the Chalk inclusive. 



