by M. Aclrien Camper. PVom this circumstance, arid from the other 

 remains which accompany those of this animal, there can be no doubt of 

 its having been an inhabitant of the ocean. 



The fossil remains of the extremities of this animal appear to have 

 been so rarely found, that M. Cuvier, at one time, was led to suppose 

 that it had none. M. Faujas has however given, Mont, de S. Pierre, 

 PI. xi. under the name of Scapula, the figure of a pubis, which very 

 nearly resembles that of a monitor. Among the specimens sent from 

 Seichem, M. Cuvier found a portion of a real shoulder-blade, much re- 

 sembling, in its form, that of the monitor's, but very different from the 

 narrow shoulder-blade of the crocodile, or from that of the iguana. It is 

 right to observe that the bone represented by M. Faujas, Mont, de S. 

 Pierre, PL x. is merely the humerus of a large tortoise. 



P. Camper, as well as his son, speak of, but neither figure nor describe, 

 a bone of the carpus and of the phalanges: M. Cuvier, who has not seen 

 any of these bones, thinks we may however be allowed to conjecture, 

 from the agreement of the teeth and vertebrae with those of the monitor's, 

 that this animal had five toes ; whilst, from its being a marine swimming 

 animal, we have reason to suppose, that neither its toes nor hind feet were 

 so elongated as in those reptiles, w/hich are for the most part terrestrial. 



Taking all these circumstances into consideration, M. Cuvier concludes, 

 and certainly on fair, if not indisputable grounds, that this animal must 

 have formed an intermediate genus between those animals of the lizard 

 tribe, which have an extensive and forked tongue, which include the 

 monitors and the common lizards, and those which have a short tongue 

 and the palate armed with teeth, which comprise the, iguanas, marbres, 

 and anolis. This genus, he thinks, could only have been allied to the cro- 

 codile by the general characters of the lizards. 



The history of this wonderful fossil gives us, then, an instance of an 

 animal far surpassing, in its size, any of the animals of those genera to 

 which it approaches the nearest, in its general characters : at the same time 



