328 FOSSIL REPTILES. 



No mammiferous animal has the cranium so small in pro- 

 portion to the muzzle as this fossil reptile. 



The length of the neck is proportioned to that of the head, 

 muzzle included. There are five vertebrae, large and pris- 

 matic, like those of long-necked birds, and a smaller one at 

 each extremity ; perhaps there may have been two towards the 

 head, so that the total number would have been seven, as in 

 mammifera and crocodiles, or eight, as in tortoises. 



What is most astonishing is, that this long head and neck 

 are supported on so small a body. Birds alone exhibit simi- 

 lar proportions, which, doubtless, added to the length of the 

 great toe, determined some naturalists to refer this animal to 

 that class from which it is removed by so many other cha- 

 racters. 



The neck is so much recurved behind that the occiput 

 touches the pelvis in the specimen. There are nineteen or 

 twenty dorsal and lumbar vertebrae. M. Oken admits twenty- 

 two, including the sacral. 



It is difficult to say how many of these vertebrae supported 

 ribs, but there remain at least a dozen in their places on the 

 right side. The bodies and the spinous apophyses of the 

 vertebrae are visible, but the left side of the annular part is 

 removed from almost all of them, so that the medullary canal 

 is to be seen. The anterior spinous apophyses are a little the 

 longest. The posterior are short and cut square. Neither 

 birds nor bats have any so formed. 



There are transverse apophyses, at least to the first seven 

 vertebrae, to which apophyses the ribs are attached. Beyond 

 the ninth, says M. Oken, there are no more, and the rib is 

 attached immediately to the vertebra. 



All the ribs are singularly slender and filiform, which en- 

 tirely excludes this animal from the birds, where the ribs are 

 broad, and each provided with an oblique and recurrent apo- 

 physis very peculiar. 



The tail is very short and very slender, and but twelve or 



