38 FOSSIL REPTILES OF DORSET. 



Richard Owen, whose description of this fossil is in the thirty- 

 ninth volume of the " Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," 

 p. 337, observed some very thin long plates lying within the orbit, 

 on the same slab which contained the teeth and bones, which he 

 thinks probable to have been sclerotic plates to strengthen the corneal 

 part of the eye-ball, which was small. The orbit, which is of 

 great relative size and elliptic instead of the usual circular form, 

 finds its nearest approach amongst existing Saurians in the large 

 carnivorous Varanians. Besides the above described portions 

 there were two others of equal interest, although more fragmentary 

 part of the left mandibular ramus, containing eight teeth and a 

 small portion of the upper and lower jaw, with teeth more or less 

 broken away. Sir R. Owen calculates the total length of the skull 

 would not be less than two feet six inches. 



GENUS ORNITHOPSIS, H. G. Seeley. 



Synonym EUCAMEROTUS, Hulke ; CETIOSAURUS, Owen, partim ; 

 CETIOSAURUS, Phillip, partim ; CHONDROSTEOSAURUS, Owen, partim ; 

 BOTHROSPONDYLUS, Owen, partim ; Ischyrosaurus, Hulke ; GIGAN- 

 TOSAURUS, H. G. Seeley. 



A critical and searching examination of some Deinosaurian 

 remains from the Upper Oolites, Wealden and Cretaceous beds, by 

 Mr. Hulke, Mr. Lydekker, and Professor Seeley, has cleared away 

 many of the misapprehensions which obstructed that clearer know- 

 ledge of Ornitlwpsis we now have through the efforts of these 

 three eminent palaeontologists. By a correlation of its bones (which 

 are invariably detached and fragmentary), pelvis, coracoids, ribs, 

 femora, humeri, and the characteristic cancellated opisthoccelous 

 large chambered centra, much of the structure of Ornithopsis is 

 known. As early as 1870 Mr. Hulke foreshadowed the possibility 

 that (Eucamerotus), Ornithopsis, Cetiosaurus, Omosaurus, with 

 perhaps Streptospondylus Cuvier, were members of one genus, 

 characterised by the trunk vertebrae, bearing a complex neural arch 

 and having a large deep hollow in the lateral part of the centrum. 



