295 



borne eight teeth, which grew, were fixed, and were renewed in the 

 same manner as those of the jaws ; but which were, of course, much 

 smaller. 



We have therefore now sufficient grounds for assuming a place for 

 this fossil animal. Its head fixes it irrevocably between the monitors 

 and io-uanas. But how enormously must its size have exceeded that of 



v 



all the iguanas and monitors now known ! None of them have a head 

 longer, perhaps, than five inches; whilst, in the fossil animal, it must 

 have been nearly four feet. 



Prepared by the knowledge he had obtained, respecting the head of 

 this animal, M. Cuvier proceeded with confidence to the examination of 

 the vertebrae. P. Camper had given a figure of one of the vertebrae of 

 this animal, under the impression of the animal being one of the cetacea; 

 and M. Faujas has given four plates of them, as belonging to a species 

 of the crocodile. But M. Cuvier, aided by an important series of spe- 

 cimens, found at Seichem, a village about two leagues from Maestricht ; 

 and by a memoir of M. M. Minkelero and Herman, which accompanied 

 the specimens, has been enabled not only to point out the several kinds 

 of vertebrae, and to compare them with the analogous vertebrae in exist- 

 ing animals, but even to point out, with a high degree of probability, 

 their succession, and the number of each sort composing the spine. 



All these vertebrae, like those of crocodiles, monitors, iguanas, and 

 the greater part of the lizard and serpent tribe, have their bodies con- 

 cave in their fore part, and convex on their posterior part ; which distin- 

 guishes them decidedly from those of cetacea, in which they are nearly 

 flat ; and still more from those of fishes, in which the two ends are hol- 

 lowed into conical cavities. The concavities and convexities of these ver- 

 tebrae are, as in all similar vertebrae, more strong in the anterior than in 

 the posterior vertebrae. 



The apophyses establish, by their number, five kinds of vertebrae. The 

 first sort, the last of the neck and the first of the back, have a superior spi- 

 nous apophysis, long and compressed ; an inferior, terminated by a con- 



