146 : Owen— Fossil Fish from Malta. 
of the teeth is proportionally more expanded, and in most of the 
teeth the crown is here hollow: the teeth are also close-set. An 
extent of three inches of the alveolar part of the jaw includes eleven 
teeth: whereas in the Maltese fossil the same extent includes only 
four teeth, the bases of the teeth being of nearly the same size in 
both specimens, and in a portion of jaw of the same size and 
coarse fibrous structure. 
Portion of the Jaws of Stereodus Melitensis, Ow. (Reduced one-third.) 
Of the four teeth in the Maltese specimen, the interspace between 
the middle two teeth is nine lines, and between the two near the end 
of the part measured six lines. ‘This wide spacing of the teeth, with 
the shape of the crowns and the general size of the specimen, led to 
its being regarded, in the Maltese Museum, as ‘belonging to a Cro- 
codilian,’ under which impression the portion of the specimen was 
transmitted tome. But the mode of the fixation of the teeth shows 
the fossil not to be of the Crocodilian order, and the osseous tissue 
of the jaw militates against its reference to the extinct order of Rep- 
tiles with anchylosed teeth, to which the Mosasaurus, for example, 
belongs. 
In the portion of the jaw opposed to that which contains the four 
teeth, the impressions in the matrix show the shape and size of the 
crowns of five of the teeth which it contained; and the fractured 
base of one of these demonstrates its compact solid texture at that 
part. These five teeth occupied a space of about three inches. —Two 
of the teeth have been only a line apart: between other two a space 
of five lines intervenes, and that of eight lines between the two that 
are most remote from each other. 
Dr. Adams writes to me, that the portion of the skeleton of 
this (supposed) ‘ Crocodilian ’ ends abruptly at the tenth dorsal 
vertebra. 
It measures 22 inches in length. The vertebre are apparently 
cup-shaped, and average an antero-posterior diameter of from 
