298 PETEIFACTIONS AND THEIR TEACHINGS. CHAP. III. 



HORN OR DERMAL TUBERCLE OF THE IGUANODON. Wall- 

 case C, (on the narrow front ledge, ante, p. 227.) Allusion has 

 been made in an early page of this chapter to a fossil ob- 

 tained from the quarry at Cuckfield, soon after my discovery 

 of the teeth of the Iguanodon, which some of my scientific 

 friends supposed to be the lesser horn of a Rhinoceros. This 

 very curious relic was figured and described in 1827, in my 

 "Fossils of Tilgate Forest" (PL III. fig. 5), as the frontal 

 tubercle or Horn of the Iguanodon; Mr. Pentland, the emi- 

 nent naturalist, having first suggested its true nature. 



In the " Geology of the S. E. of England," (published in 

 1833,) this specimen was again figured and described, its 

 dermal character having been confirmed by Baron Cuvier, to 

 whom I showed it on his visit to London. 1 This interesting 

 fossil is placed on the front ledge of Case C. Two or three 

 dermal bones of this kind have since been found; and I have 

 a series of three conical tubercles of a similar character im- 

 planted in a coarse osseous substance, which closely resemble, 

 on a gigantic scale, the dermal spines on the back of the 

 well-known Australian lizard, termed the " Moloch." 



This fossil is of a conical form, slightly bent, with an obtuse 

 apex. It is 4 inches high ; and the base, which is of an irre- 

 gular elliptical form, and slightly excavated, like the corre- 

 sponding part of the dermal spine of the Hylseosaurus, is 

 3.2 inches in the largest diameter, and 2.1 inches in the 

 shortest. (Lign. 67, jig. 2.) Its structure presents that pecu- 

 liar disposition of the osseous fibres which is observable 

 in the dermal bones of certain reptiles ; the surface is dis- 



, 1 " Among the recent genera of lizards the Iguanas are distinguished 

 by their exuberant dermal appendages ; many of the species have enor- 

 mous serrated processes on the back ; others on the tail and guttural 

 pouch, while some have warts or horny protuberances on the head. These, 

 however, are so small, the horn in the most favoured species, Iguana, 

 cornuta, being scarcely a quarter of an inch high in an animal five feet 

 long, that no one could have imagined the corresponding part of an 

 extinct reptile would have been preserved in a fossil state. This relic 

 is of so extraordinary a nature, that although it has been noticed in my 

 former work, I am anxious to dwell on it in this place, that I may in- 

 troduce the remarks of M. Cuvier, by whom it was examined during 

 his last visit to London, and at whose suggestion a more accurate 

 representation is here given, than that in the ' Fossils of Tilgate 

 Forest.' " " Geology of the S. E. of England," p. 312. 1 vol. 8vo, 

 1833. 



