Arthur Smith Woodivard — British Fossil CrocodiUa. 507 



The genus Suchosauriis, Owen,^ is very imperfectly known. It is 

 founded upon detached teeth from the Wealden of Tilgate Forest, 

 characterized by their laterally compressed and slightly curved 

 shape, and ornamented with prominent longitudinal ridges ; they 

 are especially remarkable from the fact, that the compression is from 

 side to side, and the opposite trenchant "carinse" hence anterior and 

 posterior, while the corresponding edges in most other crocodilian 

 teeth that are known to possess them are distinctly lateral in posi- 

 tion. Only one species, S. cuUridens, is as yet recognized, and with 

 the teeth Sir Richard Owen has ventured to associate a peculiar type 

 of Wealden vertebra that can scarcely be referred to any other 

 Saurian hitherto met with in those deposits. 



Only one other British crocodilian fossil of Wealden (?) age 

 appears to have been hitherto described. It is a small slab of 

 " Greensand," from the neighbourhood of Hastings, exhibiting a 

 few scarcely determinable scutes and other skeletal fragments, 

 and described by Sir Richard Owen,^ in 1851, under the name of 

 " Crocodiltis ? Saulii." Later discoveries, of course, suggest its 

 affinities with such forms as Bernissartia or the Purbeck genera. 



Cretaceous Crocodilia. 



No members of the Crocodilian order seem to have been recorded 

 from any of the British Cretaceous formations, except the Cambridge 

 Greensand. While the corresponding beds in North America afford 

 evidence both of the decline of the Mesosuchia and the rise of the 

 Eusuchia, at this period — and while satisfactory remains of the last- 

 named suborder are also known from Continental deposits — the 

 only discoveries hitherto recorded in Britain are a few procoelian 

 vertebrae from Cambridge. These are regarded by Prof. Seeley as 

 indicative of two species, probably belonging to the genus CrocodUua, 

 and accordingly named C. cantabrigiensis ^ and C. icenicus.^ 



Eocene Crocodilia. 



Of all known Crocodilia of the Eocene period, perhaps no series 

 can claim to be of greater interest than that discovered in the 

 London and Hampshire Basins. Not only — as Sir Eicliard Owen 

 has pointed out — are the characters both of Crocodiles, Alligators, 

 and Gavials, observed in the various forms from this single area, 

 while the three families are nowhere found associated at the present 

 day ; but many of the fossil remains already known are also of a 



1 R. Owen, Brit. Assoc. Eeports, 1841, p. 67; and " Mon. Foss. Rept. "Weald. 

 etc.," Suppl. viii., (Mon. Pal. Soc. 1878), p. 12, pi. iv. figs. 5-8. 



^ R. Owen, " Monograph of the Fossil ReptiUa of the Cretaceous Formations," 

 (Mon. Pal. Soc, 1851), p. 45, pi. xv. 



2 H. G. Seeley, "Index to Reptilia, etc., in Woodwardian Museum" (1869), 

 p. xvi, and " On Cervical and Dorsal Vertebrae of Crocodilus cantabrigiensis (Seeley) 

 from the Cambridge Upper Greensand," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxx. (1874), 

 pp. 693-69.5. 



* H. G. Seeley, " On Crocodilus icenicus (Seeley), a second and larger Species of 

 Crocodile from the Cambridge Upper Greensand, contained in the Woodwardian 

 Museum of the University of Cambridge," he. vit. vol. xxxii. (1876), pp. 437-439. 



