130 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 
ness and loss of breadth, to abut against the pterygoid facet of the tympanic. This bone 
(ib. fig. 3, 24) is the “ pterygoid.” External and superior to it was the hind end of the 
palatine (ib. 20), which there has a breadth of 5 lines, the inner angle of which is 
rather thickened where it touched the vomer. From the outer, thinner and sharper 
angle the margin of the plate, which is the lower and outer one, is straight, slightly 
thickened, and, after advancing for one inch, expands, becoming again lamelliform. 
This end, however, is not entire, and seems to have been broken away from some 
attachment. The hind plate, which, after a slight transverse convexity from the hinder 
and outer angle, bends upward and inward, expands to a breadth of 7 lines at a distance 
of 9 lines from the hinder and inner angle; it then contracts with a thin wavy border to 
the fore end of the outer thicker border, which is there as it were twisted inward upon 
or beneath it. The entire plate then shows a twofold sinuous disposition with the con- 
cavity of the major part turned downward and inward. It bounds the inner, posterior 
or palatal nostril, and is homologous with the palatine (20, fig. 2, Emu, Joc. cit.). 
In the second skull of Dinornis crassus, yielding evidence of palatal structure, the 
palatals were found with the anterior, expanded, inwardly twisted end of the straight 
outer tract in contact with the palatal plate of the maxillary. This plate (ib. fig. 3, 21’), 
in form and proportion resembling that in Dinornis robustus (Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. v. 
pl. 56. fig. 1, 21"), together with the attached portion of the body of the maxillary, had 
been slightly displaced on both sides by a superincumbent pressure of matrix, the skull 
seeming to have rested on the calvarium, palate upwards. No trace of the delicate 
vomerine plates had been preserved in this skull. But, together with the tympanic, 
pressed forward to the horizontal position, with the mastoid condyle slightly dislocated, 
there was exposed in the space between the orbital process of the tympanic and the 
pterapophysis of the basisphenoid, extending obliquely inward between the hind part 
of the palatine and the base of the presphenoid, the pterygoid bone, corresponding in 
shape with that above described. This bone had its thick, narrow, subtrihedral end 
directed toward the pterygoid articular facet of the tympanic, and its lamellate fore 
end joining both vomer and palatine. Retaining its attachment to the tympanic on 
the left side, where that bone has been pressed more outward than on the right, the 
pterygoid has been dragged away from its anterior connexions, and lies above and to 
the outside of the left palatine. 
In the general proportions and connexions of the above-described bones, readjusted 
as nearly as their condition permitted in their natural places, as in Pl. XI. fig. 3, they 
defined the posterior nostrils (palato-nares) and the pterapophysial vacuities (those 
between the rostrum and pterygoids bounded behind by the pterapophyses), in form 
and extent most nearly corresponding with that part of the skull in the Apteryx!. The 
two moieties of the vomer are in contact beneath the rostrum for nearly the same rela- 
tive extent in Apteryx as in Dinornis; and the confluent anterior part of the vomerine 
* Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. ii. pl. 53. fig. 2. 
