FOSSIL REPTILES OF DORSET. 37 



GENUS MEGALOSAUKUS, B-uckland. 

 MEGALOSAURUS BUCKLANDII, BucTdand. 

 Poikilopleuron Bucklandii, E. E. Deslongchamps. 



This gigantic and formidable Dinosaur, whose length is 

 estimated at upwards of thirty feet and whose femur and 

 tibia each measured three feet in length, was terrestrial, the 

 the larger bones having a medullary cavity, and the head of the 

 femur was set nearly at right angles to the shaft. Its 

 powerful and pointed cutting serrated teeth prove it to have 

 been carnivorous. The first remains of it, consisting of a 

 fragment of the lower jaw, a femur, a series of fine vertebrae 

 of the trunk, a few ribs, and an ilium, were found at Stones- 

 field, near Woodstock. Since then other portions have been 

 recovered. There is a peculiarity in the sacrum, which consists of 

 five vertebrae, which occurs in no mammal, but is repeated in the 

 Class of Aves, and are much constricted in the middle ; the Ischia 

 are long and slender, resembling the Iguanodon in this respect. 

 The great trochanter of the femur is broad, the situation of the inner 

 trochanter on the shaft is higher up than in Iguanodon. There is 

 no evidence its having had an exoskeleton. The knowledge of the 

 structure of the skull was very defective up to the year 1869. Like 

 the jaws of existing lizards, the outer and inner walls of the ramus 

 are unequal, rendering the alveolar groove incapable of receiving the 

 teeth, excepting in the early stages of their development. The 

 teeth are set in distinct sockets, the crowns are smooth, polished, 

 compressed, curved, and their edges minutely serrate. The fore- 

 limbs are very much smaller than the hind limbs. 



In the year 1882 Edward Cleminshaw, Esq., M.A., F.G.S., of 

 Greenhill, Sherborne, observed imbedded fossils in three blocks of 

 stone from the neighbouring Inferior Oolite quarries of the 

 neighbourhood, which proved to be portions of the upper 

 and lower jaws of the Megalosaurus, including the facial 

 part of the skull, one foot three inches and a-quarter in 

 length. Ten teeth are preserved in the maxillary bone, between 

 some of which are crowns of successional or undeveloped teeth. Sir 



