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XI On DiNORNis (Part VII.) : containing a Description of the Bones of the Leg and Foot 

 o/Dinornis elephantopus, Owen. By Professor Owen,F.R.S., V.P.Z.S., ^c. 



Read April 8, 1856. 



IMR. Walter Mantell having, on his recent return from New Zealand, provisionally 

 deposited his very extensive collection of remains of Dinornithic and other Birds in the 

 British Museum, I have gladly acceded to the wishes of that successful and enter- 

 prising collector, and of my friend the able Keeper of the Geological Department of 

 the Museum, to devote the leisure at my command to the examination of this interest- 

 ing and valuable collection'. 



I had advanced as far as the determination of the bones of the leg, and their classi- 

 fication according to their species, when the distinctive characters of one series of these 

 bones irresistibly brought a conviction that they belonged to a species of Dinornis 

 that had not previously come under my notice, — a species which, for the massive 

 strength of the limbs, and the general proportions of breadth or bulk to height of body, 

 must have been the most extraordinary of all the previously restored wingless birds of 

 New Zealand, and unmatched, probably, by any known recent or extinct member of 

 the class of Birds. 



On a former occasion, I was so much struck by the form and proportions of the 

 metatarsal bone referred to the species called Dinornis crassus, and described in the 

 Memoir read to the Zoological Society, June 23, 1846, and figured in pi. 48, figs. 4 & 5, 

 vol. iii. of the 'Zoological Transactions,' that I alluded to it as "representing the 

 pachydermal type and proportions in the feathered class^;" and the bone unquestion- 

 ably indicated, at that period, " the strongest and most robust of birds." But by the 

 side of the metatarsus of the species which I have now to describe, and for which I 

 propose the name of elephantopus, the metatarsus oi Dinornis crassus shrinks to moderate 

 if not slender dimensions. But the peculiarities of the elephant-footed Dinornis stand 

 out still more conspicuously when the bones of its lower limbs are contrasted with 

 those of Dinornis giganteus. 



I propose, in the present Memoir, to combine with the account of the leg- and foot- 

 bones of Dinornis elephantopus, that of the bones of the lower limb of Dinornis crassus 

 which had not previously been described, and to bring out their characteristics by 

 comparison with the bones of other species, especially those of Dinornis rohustus. 



' Since the communication of the present Memoir, this collection has been purchased by the Trustees of the 

 British Museum, and the entire skeleton of Dinornis elephantopus has been recomposed and articulated, and 

 is now exhibited in the Gallery of Fossil Remains. 



' lb. p. 325. 

 VOL. IV. PART V. Z 



