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of the head, a position which would be convenient to an air- 

 breathing animal that spent most of its time in the water. 



With regard to what may be called the architecture of this 

 huge skeleton, Professor Osborn says : " The backbone is indeed 

 a marvel. The fitness of the construction consists, like that of 

 the American truss-bridge, in attaining the maximum of strength 

 with the minimum of weight." 



Morosaurus is an allied form, also from the Atlantosaurus beds 

 of Wyoming, with a long neck and small head. But no complete 

 skeleton has yet been found. 



Unfortunately, there are at present no complete skeletons 

 known of English Dinosaurs related to the American forms above 

 described. But, since the English fossils were first in evidence 

 by many years, and Marsh's discoveries have confirmed in a 

 remarkable way conclusions drawn by Owen, Huxley, Hulke, 

 and Seeley, and others from materials that were rather frag- 

 mentary, it may be worth while to give some account of these 

 remains and the interpretations they have received. 



Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise, 1836, referred to a 

 limb-bone in the Oxford Museum, from the great Oolite forma- 

 tion near Woodstock, which was examined by Cuvier, and 

 pronounced to have once belonged to a whale ; also a very large 

 rib, which seemed whale-like. In 1838 Professor Owen, when 

 collecting materials for his famous Eeport on the Fossil Reptiles 

 of Great Britain, inspected this remarkable limb-bone, and 

 could not match it with any bones known among the whale 

 tribe; and yet its structure, where exposed, was like that of 

 the long bone (humerus) of the paddle of a whale. Later on, 

 he abandoned the idea that it once belonged to a whale, and it 

 was thought that the extinct animal in question might have 

 been a reptile of the crocodilian order. In time, a fine series 



