44 Reports and Proceedings, — 



including some new to science, are fairly numerous ; there are 

 remains of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, mollusca, and traces of 

 insects and plants. The mammals comprise Coryphodon, HyracotJie- 

 Hum, and a portion of a mandible, which Mr. W. Davies regards as 

 belonging to a species of insectivore. The overlying Oldhaven and 

 Blackheath beds and London-clay are noticed, and a list of the fossils 

 obtained from the latter formation at Dulwich Wood and Sydenham 

 Hill is furnished by Mr. Caleb Evans. Overlying the Eocene beds, 

 in some parts, are sands, gravels, and clays, belonging or subsequent 

 to the Glacial Period ; and still newer than these are beds of peat, 

 found in the lower part of the parish, which at that time, as well as 

 the district towards the Thames, was more or less of a swampy 

 character favourable to rapid vegetable growth ; as the river became 

 gradually restricted to its present limits by artificial means, the forest 

 disappeared, leaving trunks and leaves to attest the last change in 

 the physical conditions of this and other low-lying parts of the 

 Thames near London. J. M. 



I^E:pOI^TS j^istjd ipisooiezezdid^g-s. 



Gteological Society of London. — L — November 17, 1875. — John 

 Evans, Esq., V.P.R.S., in the Chair. — The following communications 

 were read. 



1. "^ On a new modification of Dinosaurian Yertebrse." By Prof. 

 Eichard Owen, C.B., F.R.S., E.G.S., etc. 



The peculiar modification of the Dinosaurian vertebra noticed by 

 the author occurs in Tapinocephalus Atlierstonii and Pareiosaurus 

 hombidens. In the dorsal vertebrae of the former the centra are 

 nearly flat on both fore and hind surfaces, a structure to express 

 which the author proposes the term " amphiplatyan." The hind 

 surface is very slightly the more concave. The middle of each 

 surface is j)ierced by a small foramen leading into a cylindrical 

 canal, first slightly expanding and then rapidly contracting to a 

 point, which meets the apex of the similar hollow cone coming from 

 the opposite surface. Similar characters were observed upon the 

 free surface of the anterior sacral and upon that of the posterior of 

 four anchylosed sacrals. 



The dorso-lumbar vertebrae of the Pareiosaurus had centra rela- 

 tively longer than those of Tapinocephalus. Their articular surface 

 is subundulate, convex along a fourth of the periphery, concave at 

 the centre, where there is an excavation corresponding to that in 

 Tapinocephalus, but a relatively wider aperture, a rather more con- 

 stricted canal, a shorter terminal cone, and an interval of osseous 

 tissue separating the apices of the cones from the fore and hind 

 surfaces. In what is probably the first cervical vertebra of the 

 same Dinosaur, the centrum is so concave on both surfaces as to 

 become amphicoelian. 



In these unossified tracts of the middle of the centrum in the two 

 genera above mentioned the author sees indications of a persistent 



