MONOGRAPH 



ON 



THE FOSSIL REPTILIA 



OF THE 



WEALDEN AND PURBECK FORMATIONS. 



Order— i^ CER TILIA . 



Genus — Nuthetes,* Owen. 



NUTHETES DESTRUCTOR, Owetl. 



For a knowledge of the fossil remains on which the present genus and species 

 were founded,! I am indebted to Charles Wilcox, Esq., M.R.C.S., of Swanage, 

 Dorsetshire, by whom the specimens submitted to me, including a portion of jaw 

 with teeth, were discovered in the Purbeck formation, from the bed marked k 93 

 in Mr. Austen's ' Guide.'J 



The teeth are attached by partial anchylosis to depressions on the inner side 

 of an alveolar wall, or according to the " pleurodont type." Their enamelled 

 crowns are moderately long, compressed, pointed, slightly recurved, with a well- 

 marked but finely serrated margin before and behind ; the thickest part of the 

 crown is not at the middle, but nearer the anterior border, as in the great 

 Varanus (^Var. crocodilinus) and in Megalosaurus ; and they clearly resemble, in 



* Abbreviated from vovdeTrjTrjs, Ilonitor ; in reference to the resemblance of the teeth of the fossil to 

 those of the modern Varanian Monitors. 



f 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' 1854, p. 120. 



X ' Guide to the Geology of the Isle of Purbeck,' by the Rev. J. Austen, M.A., Blandford, 1852. 



