A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



and described by the late Sir R. Owen in the Report of the British Association 

 for 1839. Of greater interest is a slab showing the impressions of the bones 

 and integument, together with some of the bones themselves, of an imperfect 

 hind-paddle from Barrow, presented in 1855 to the British Museum by the 

 late Sir P. de Malpas Grey-Egerton, where it bears the register number 

 29672.* This species has also been obtained from the Lias of the vale of 

 Belvoir, and likewise from a pit between Barrow and Sileby. Of the closely 

 allied Ichthyosaurus intermedius the Dublin and the Leicester Museums possess 

 several more or less incomplete skeletons from the Barrow Lias. By far the 

 most interesting of these specimens is a split nodule in the last-named 

 collection exhibiting the skeleton of the fore part of the body and of one 

 front-paddle. In this specimen the outline of the soft parts of the paddle is 

 clearly displayed ; the posterior border showing fine parallel streaks which are 

 considered to represent the impressions of muscular fibres. A figure of this 

 paddle is given by the present writer in the Geological Magazine for 1889. 

 The best half of the nodule is in the Leicester Museum, and the counterpart 

 in the British Museum. To a third species of the same group of the genus, 

 namely Ichthyosaurus conybeari, typified by a skeleton from Somerset, not 

 improbably belongs an ichthyosaurian skeleton from Barrow preserved in the 

 Sedgwick, or Woodwardian, Museum at Cambridge. 



The remaining fish-lizards from Barrow belong to a group characterized 

 by the narrowness of the paddles, which contain fewer longitudinal rows of 

 bones than in the typical section. Of the species Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris 

 the Leicester Museum possesses a slab of Barrow Lias showing a skeleton 

 about nine feet long. Another long-jawed and narrow-paddled fish-lizard has 

 received the name of Ichthyosaurus latifrons, although it is doubtful whether 

 it is really specifically distinct from the last. The type specimen, which is 

 believed to be from Barrow on Soar, is in the British Museum (No. R. 1 122), 

 and was figured so far back as 1825 by Konig in Icones Fossilium Secti/es 

 (pi. xix), and later on by Owen in his ' Monograph of the Reptiles of the 

 Lias,' published by the Palaeontographical Society. A second skeleton in the 

 same collection (No. 36182) is certainly from Barrow; it was made the type 

 of a distinct species by Owen, under the name of I. longirostris, but is not 

 distinct from I. latifrons, whether or no the latter be separable from /. tenui- 

 rostris. Impressions of the skin of the creature are noticeable on this slab. 

 Here brief reference may be made to a very interesting but specifically 

 undetermined ichthyosaurian skeleton from Barrow now preserved in the 

 museum at Oxford. This specimen, which is about five feet long, is men- 

 tioned by Potter in his History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest,* and is 

 described and figured in Dean Buckland's Geology and Mineralogy, , 8 where 

 mention is made of the fact that impressions of portions of the skin are dis- 

 played in the matrix. An ichthyosaurian vertebra in the Leicester Museum 

 was obtained from the Middle Lias, or Marlstone, of Tilton-on-the-Hill. 



It should be added that there is some doubt whether the great smooth- 

 oothed fish-lizard, Ichthyosaurus, or Temnodontosaurus, platyodon, is represented 



' This interesting specimen has been several times figured, once by Owen in Tram. Geol. Soc. Lend. 

 <*? "' f.P? n '" h / S /T V Reftitia ( P ^~ntographical Soc.), pi. xxviii, fig. 3 ; also by Kiprijanoff 

 in the Memwtftht Impmal Academy of St. Petersburg, vol. xxviii, art. 8, pi. ix, fig. 12 (iW 



nut. and Antiq. ofCharnviood forest, 64 

 Vol. ii, 22, pi. x. 



22 



