FOSSIL REPTILES. 315 



in length. The head approached one-sixth of the total length. 

 This proportion resembles that in the crocodile, but is very 

 different from that of the monitors. But again, the tail being 

 ten feet, is but nearly one-half of the total length, while in the 

 crocodile it exceeds the length of the body by one-seventh. Its 

 shortness is owing to the shortness of the body of the vertebrae. 

 But it must have been very robust, and the breadth of its 

 extremity must have made it a very powerful oar, and enabled 

 the animal to contend with the most agitated waters. There 

 is no doubt, then, from the nature of all the other debris found 

 with its remains, in the same quarries, that it was a marine 

 animal. 



On the articulation of the ribs, either to each other or the 

 sternum, the Baron hazards no opinion, in consequence of the 

 imperfection of their remains. All, however, which have been 

 discovered were round, as in the lizards, not flat, as in the cro- 

 codiles. 



The bones of the extremities which have been collected are 

 small in number, and nothing very definite is concluded con- 

 cerning them. The bones of the hands and feet, as far as 

 known, seemed to have belonged to a contracted sort of fins, 

 not unlike those of the dolphin or the plesiosaurus. 



It seems, upon the whole, quite certain that this great ani- 

 mal of Maestricht must have formed an intermediate link 

 between the tribe of saurians without palatine teeth, the moni- 

 tors, &c. and those which have palatine, or rather pterygoidean 

 teeth, as the common lizards, iguanas, &c. but that it had no 

 relation to the crocodiles, except in some partial characters, 

 and in those general bonds of connexion which re-unite the 

 immense family of oviparous quadrupeds. 



It may doubtless appear strange to some naturalists to see 

 an animal exceed so much in dimensions those genera to which 

 it approaches most in the natural order, and to find its debris 

 with marine productions, while no saurian of the present day 

 appears to live in the salt-water. But these singularities are 



