24 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



which reptiles preponderated, and we shall find, 

 amongst the organic remains of this period, a great 

 number of forms tending to give considerable insight 

 into the plan of creation, with reference to this im- 

 portant department of zoology. 



Among the links thus supplied, the fossils of the 

 new red sandstone exhibit two animals, each offering 

 some curious anomalies of structure, each somewhat 

 highly organized, and while in many remarkable 

 points of structure resembling one another, each pre- 

 senting at the same time certain characters which 

 connect the great class of reptiles, on one hand with 

 birds, by a very unexpected route, and on the other 

 with quadrupeds in a manner no less singular. 



Both these animals seem to belong to the lizard 

 tribe of reptiles, and one of them, the remains of 

 which have been found in England, is called Rhyncho- 

 saurus* while the other, obtained from the Cape of 

 Good Hope, has received the name of Dicynodon.-\- 



The Rhyncliosaurus is known by the skull and se- 

 veral bones of the extremities, all of which were found 

 some years ago in the Grinsill quarries, near Warwick. 

 Impressions of the foot-prints of a small animal, pro- 

 bably an individual of the same species,were also 

 found on some slabs of sandstone in the same quarry. 



The skull of the Ehynchosaur differs essentially 



* 'Pwy%ag (rhynchos~), a beak ; traumas (sawros), a lizard. 



f* At? (dis\ twice; xwobovg (cynodous), canine teeth, (having two canine 

 ieeth.) I have ventured to assume that the beds in which the Dicynodon 

 remains are found are of the triassic period. The evidence of super- 

 position, as far as it goes, seems to support the probability of this 

 view, and is certainly in no point opposed to it, while the peculiarities of 

 structure of these remarkable reptilian remains have suggested such a posi- 

 tion as the most probable one. (See Geol. Trans., 2nd ser., vol. vii. p. 53.) 



