120 MEMOIRS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM 



Either one of this pair of bones is thickened, much cut away posteriorly, but 

 broadly wedged in among the usual facial elements in front. Above they are 

 moulded closely upon the rounded rostrum of the sphenoid, being drawn to a fine 

 point anteriorly. It is along this line beneath that the palatines fuse with the 

 vomer, an element which has much in its form to remind us of that bone in the 

 Laridse, being pointed in front, mesially carinated below, and grooved longitudinally 

 along its upper surface. Laterally, the surface of a palatine looks almost directly 

 outwards, and it is here that we invariably find one or more pneumatic foramina 

 leading into the interior of the bone. A palatine head is large and offers an ample 

 articulatory surface for the corresponding pterygoid. These palatal heads are closely 

 pressed together, but in front of them, below, the bones send down in common only 

 the merest suspicion of a midcarination, a character so common in Pelecanus, Cor- 

 morants, and other species of the suborder. The postero-e'xternal angle of a pala- 

 tine can hardly be said to exist in the skull of this bird, as the bone so abruptly 

 slopes away in that part of its body, as will be observed by referring to the figures 

 in the plates. 



The pterygoids are long, stout, straight, subcylindrical, rod-like bones, cupped at 

 their extremities, and when articulated in situ, stand well above the basitemporal 

 area. Not a semblance of such a thing as a basipterygoidal process is to be 

 discovered upon either of them, or at the anterior borders of the basisphenoid. An- 

 teriorly, their palatine heads articulate in contact with each other ; their divergence 

 from this point is at an angle of about 20. 



The basitemporal area is triangular in form with a small transverse ridge cross- 

 ing its center. In front a broad, anteriorly rounded lip of bone underlaps the 

 double openings for the internal carotid. So prominent in Sula, the paroccipital 

 processes are here much reduced in size, and the hemispherical condyle is sessile and 

 unnotched on its superior aspect. The foramen magnum is subcircular in outline, 

 and is situated, as it were, in the middle of a shallow concavity. 



A quadrate has an extensive anterior surface ; transversely elongated, antero-pos- 

 teriorly compressed, articular facet for the mandible ; a double mastoidal head ; and 

 a broad, squarely truncated orbital process. This bone is also pneumatic, and its 

 articular facet for a pterygoid is rounded and projecting. As in Sula, there is a 

 very deep pit, of no mean size, immediately in front of the mastoidal process of 

 either quadrate, and when those bones are in situ, they arch over the posterior thirds 

 of these pits, in such a manner as to have, in each case, the outer mastoidal head 

 articulate upon the outer border of this pit, and the inner head upon the inner 

 border. Either one of these deep excavations is situated above and to the outer 



