﻿2 



FOSSIL REPTILIA OF THE 



the bottom, had been preyed upon by some contemporary carnivorous marine animals. 

 It seems as if a bite of the neck had pulled out of place the eighth to the twelfth 

 vertebrae. Those at the base of the neck have been scattered and displaced, as if 

 through more " rugging and riving." Some creature which has had a grip of the 

 spine, near the middle of the back, has pulled to one side all the succeeding vertebras 

 of the pelvis; their adhesion to that part and, more or less, to each other, being 

 retained. This wrench would expose the abdominal viscera, a tergo, where we now 

 see the upper or inner surface of the abdominal ribs or sterno-costal arches. The 

 intermediate and succeeding portions of the vertebral column retain their natural 

 relative positions, as in the prone position of the carcass ; and the skull, scapular arch 

 and appendages, pelvic arch and appendages, and the tail, show respectively their 

 relative positions as in the entire animal. Many of the otherwise undisturbed vertebras, 

 however, have turned, so as to present their most extensive surface to the direction of 

 the slow, cosmical, compressing force operating on their imbedding stratum. 



This is the case with the first twenty cervical vertebrae in the specimen Tab. I, 

 which appears to have settled in the Liassic mud back downwards, their spines being 

 turned toward the right side ; beyond the twenty-first cervical the vertebras have 

 rotated in the opposite direction, presenting more or less of a side view, with the 

 neural arch and spine turned to the left ; but most of the spinous processes have 

 been removed with the matrix in the original exposure of the specimen. The trunk 

 preserves the supine position, exposing the broad coracoids (52), and pubes (G-i), with 

 scattered, intervening, abdominal ribs. Part of the left pectoral fin (53 — 56) is in 

 situ ; a smaller part of the corresponding pelvic fin (65—67) lies across the pelvis. 



No partial force has operated after interment to dislocate any of the vertebrae, save 

 the few terminal ones of the tail, which have disappeared, probably dragged away 

 with whatever tegumentary expansion may have there represented a caudal fin. 



In the specimen figured by Dr. Buckland * the skeleton, as it is exposed to view, 

 lies prone ; the vertebras, whilst their matrix was in the state allowing them to turn, 

 have presented their largest surface to the direction of superincumbent pressure, the 

 spines of those at the basal half of the neck being turned down or toward the right 

 side, while those of the dorsal vertebras have yielded in the opposite direction, both 

 kinds presenting more or less of a side view. The thoracic ribs have slipped some 

 way from their articulations, yet preserve, in the main, their relative positions, in 

 serial succession. The anterior dorsals overlie the coracoids, and the posterior dorsal 

 and sacral vertebras overlie the dislocated parts of the pelvis. One of the thickened, 

 short, and straight sacral ribs abuts against the right ilium. Upwards of thirty caudal 

 vertebras extend, in nearly a straight line, from the sacrum. The vertebrae at the fore 

 part of the neck have been displaced, and in great part lost. Of the head little is 

 visible, save the mandibular rami. The bones of both fore and hind paddles on the 



* Op. cit., vol. ii, plate x, fig. 2. 



