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FOSSIL REPTILIA OF THE 



British Museum as much of the matrix as gave evidence or promise of containing organic 

 remains. This operation was carried out with Mr. Davies' experienced skill and 

 judgment. 1 Some tons weight of matrix was transmitted to the British Museum, and 

 occupied, during the remainder of the year, the practised chisel of Mr. Barlow, the 

 mason-sculptor of the Geological Department, under the guidance and supervision of 

 Mr. Waterhouse, Mr. Davies, and myself. The result was the extrication from these 

 masses of the bones of one and the same individual dragon, or Saurian, and these form 

 the subject of the present Monograph. 



They were found at a depth of ten feet from the surface soil covering the clay 

 deposit, which deposit, where it surrounded the bones, presented unusual density and 

 almost intractable hardness, and was traversed by fissures or cavities occupied by 

 infiltrated spar, presenting in parts a septarian character. This condition of the matrix 

 suggested that it might, in some degree, be due to the decomposition and exudation of 

 the soft parts of the large reptile when buried in the clay sea-bed into which it had 

 sunk ; gaseous emanations might give rise to fissures or vacuities in the surrounding 

 tenacious mass, into which the stalagmitic spar might subsequently infiltrate during the 

 long ages of the condensation, petrifaction, and upheaval of the deposit ; but cracks 

 and cavities, from whatever cause, do become so occupied, as in the present local 

 accumulation, and have received the name of ' septarian doggers.' 



In the borings lately carried on at Netherfield, near Battle, Sussex, 660 feet of 

 < Kimmeridge Clay ' were traversed before the ' Oxford Clay ' was reached, without inter- 

 position of ' Coral Rag' or ' Coralline Oolite.' 2 This testimony to the time during which 

 Kimmeridgian strata had been accumulated to such vertical extent gives free scope for 

 surmise and speculation as to the long ages during which Pliosaurs, Cetiosaurs, 

 Bothriospondylian and other enormous reptiles, lived and died in a world of which they 

 seem to have been masters, as far as grades of organic life and power, acting at that 

 epoch, have been determined. Other lines of variation and modification of the dragon 

 type, besides the new one about to be defined, probably remain to be determined by 

 ulterior research, and to reward the labour, skill, and science of investigators and 

 collectors of Kimmeridgian remains. 



Of the Dinosaurian genus and species, for which the name Omosaurus armatus* is 

 proposed, parts of the vertebral column, the pelvis, a femur, and tibia, and almost all the 

 bones of the left fore limb, have been worked out. The scapular arch, sternum, skull 



1 See the processes described by him in his instructive ' Catalogue of Pleistocene Vertebrata in the 

 Collection of Sir Antonio Brady,' 4to., 1874, p. 71. 



2 A thickness or vertical extent of 1050 feet is assigned to the combined 'upper' and 'lower' 

 divisions of the Kimmeridge Clay, by the llev. J. F. Blake, M.A., F.G.S., in his instructive memoir on 

 this formation in England, 1 Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' vol. xxxi, p. 196. 



;i 'Slfios, humerus ; luvpos, lacertus : suggested by the unusual development of the muscular crests 

 and processes of the arm-bone, perhaps in relation to the formidable weapon with which the fore limb 

 appears to have been armed. 



