ANOMALOUS REPTILES 107 



which lays eggs like a reptile. These two creatures belong to 

 the Monotreme order. 



Now the Anomodont reptiles are divided into several groups, 

 sub-orders, and families, of which we will take first those known 

 as Dicynodonts, 1 because they illustrate the anomalous nature of 

 the teeth, to which we referred just now. 



Sir E. Owen, after a careful study of these interesting remains 

 concluded 2 that there had formerly existed in South Africa 

 probably in a great lake or inland sea a race of reptiles pre- 

 senting, in the construction of their skulls, characters presented 

 by the crocodile, the tortoise, and the lizard, but possessing a 

 pair of long tusks implanted in distinct sockets, like those of 

 the walrus. No other kind of teeth had they; and, as in the 

 case of a tortoise, the lower jaw appears to have been armed by 

 a trenchant sheath of horny matter. The tusks are of a finer 

 texture than that of the crocodile's teeth, and almost as dense 

 as in the hyaena (see Plate X.). These illustrations are taken 

 from photographs very kindly sent by Professor Amalitzky, of 

 Warsaw, who has of late years laboriously worked out nodules 

 containing bones, skulls, etc., from Permian strata on the banks of 

 the Northern Dwina, near Archangel ; the results of his researches 

 are of great value (see Sir E. Kay Lankester's Extinct Animals, 

 p. 212). The head is shown in Fig. 26, and the fore limb in 

 Figs. 27, 28. As it is, at present, hardly possible to restore the 

 skeleton with any degree of certainty, we have not ventured to 

 show the Dicynodon in our Plate of New Eed Sandstone Eeptiles 

 (see Plate IX.). A carnivorous genus is shown in Plate XI. 



1 The genus Dicynodon is so called from two Greek words : dis, twice ; 

 and kunodos, dog-toothed, on account of the two tusk-like canine teeth in 

 the upper jaw. 



- Professor Owen's Memoir OH the Dicynodon, Geol. Trans., second series, 

 vol. vi., with plates. 



