xi. MEGALOSAURUSTHE HEAD. 197 



future study of fossil reptiles, has suggested itself to Professor 

 Owen in considering the peculiar sacrum with its five anchylosed 

 vertebrse a : equally firm was the impression on the mind of 

 Professor Huxley when he considered in our Museum the shape 

 of the ilium formerly conjectured by Cuvier to be a coracoid 

 and placed in their relative situation the curious slender bones 

 which so closely represent the pubis and ischium of the Stru- 

 thionidse. My own convictions had previously tended in the same 

 direction, from considering not the pelvic but the sternal arrange- 

 ments, when several years since I found the means of completely 

 ascertaining the forms of the scapula and true coracoid, which differ 

 so little from that of the apteryx. 



Megalosaurus, then, had avian points of structure, and some 

 of its habits of life were probably influenced by that analogy ; but 

 that it was truly of the reptilian type, by the essential arrange- 

 ment as far as it is known of the head, the vertebral column, ribs, 

 and limbs, we may now proceed to prove. 



The head, as it presents itself to my mind after considering the 

 crania of recent lacertians, appears in Diagram LVIL, where the parts 

 known are shaded, and the parts conjectured are in outline. The 

 lower jaw is represented in the Oxford Museum by a portion, 

 probably reaching to the anterior end, almost twelve inches long, 

 which space is occupied by a row of nine teeth, or sockets for teeth. 

 Of these, only one rises much above the outer border of the jaw, 

 which is greatly elevated, like a defensive wall. The other teeth 

 must be regarded as destined to replace what had fallen out or 

 decayed. This replacement is very curiously and completely 

 illustrated by three sizes of teeth ; quite small below the border, 

 middle-sized, just reaching to or appearing above it, and one great 

 prominent sabre-tooth. The great tooth has its young successor 

 already appearing on the inside opposite the middle, two of the 

 middle-sized teeth are equally provided, and there is one small 

 tooth corresponding to an empty exterior socket. 



The upper jaw is known in the Oxford Museum by two portions, 



' It is this structure, beautifully exemplified in the sacrum of the young Ostrich, 

 which Creative Wisdom adopted to give due strength to the corresponding region 

 of the spine of a gigantic Saurian species, whose mission in this planet had ended 

 probably before that of the Ostrich had begun. 1 Reports of British Association, 

 1841, p. 106. 



