346 PROP. OWEN ON THE SKULL OF MEGALOSAURUS. 



DESCRIPTION OF PLATE XI. 



Megalosaurus Bucklandi. 



Fig. 1. Side view of the premaxilio-maxillary, or facial part of the skull, 

 rather less than one half natural size. 



2. Inner side view of portion of the left mandibular ramus, two thirds 



nat. size. 



3. Outer side view of portions of upper and lower jaws, with teeth, 



two thirds nat. size. 



Discussion. 



The President expressed the pleasure of the Fellows in seeing 

 Prof. Owen among them at this meeting. He had himself listened 

 with the deepest interest to this extremely suggestive paper, but 

 would limit his remarks to the subject indicated by the title of the 

 paper, viz. the skull of Megalosaurus. He thought that if it was 

 impossible by the regulations of the British Museum to place the 

 actual remains before the meeting, it was much to be regretted 

 that one of the excellent casts taken by Mr. G. M. Barlow, the 

 sculptor of the Palseontological Department, had not been placed 

 upon the table. Megalosaurus was, in a certain sense, the property 

 of the Society, as it was in a communication made to it by the 

 late Dean Buckland that this Dinosaur was first brought under 

 the notice of palaeontologists. Besides this paper, and that by 

 Prof. Huxley, both mentioned by the author, and the latter's 

 valuable description of Megalosaurian remains in the 'Fossil 

 Beptilia,' he would call attention to Eudes Deslongchamps's ex- 

 haustive and accurate account of Poikilopleuron Bucklandi, in the 

 8 Memoirs of the Linnean Society of Normandy,' because there can 

 be no doubt that this Saurian was a member of the genus Megalo- 

 saurus. It should be borne in mind that the genus Megalosaurus 

 is not represented by the single species BucJclandi, but there exists 

 evidence of several species, notably the very large series of Mega- 

 losaurian remains in the collection of Mr. James Parker, of Oxford, 

 which certainly illustrates two distinct species. With respect to 

 the skull, a premaxillary in Mr. Parker's collection (poorly figured 

 by Phillips in the * Geology of Oxford ') distinctly shows the extent 

 to which this entered into the composition of the snout. In the 

 author's restoration a lower temporal bar was omitted; but as this is 

 present in the skull of every Dinosaur in which this part of the 

 skeleton is known, viz. in Iguanodon (as illustrated by I. Mantelli), 

 in Hypsilopliodon, and in Scelidosaurus, he thought its presence highly 

 probable in Megalosaurus ; he would suggest also the probability of 

 a greater extension backwards of the roof of the cranium, and a 

 more vertical direction and greater stoutness of the quadrate bone. 



Prof. Seeley spoke of the difficulty of discussing a paper of such 

 wide grasp ; for, in this memoir, Prof. Owen had gathered up the 

 threads of many lines of research. Prof. Owen had now cleared 

 up uncertainties as to the form of the premaxillary bone ; but 

 the idea of the blending of that bone with the maxillary had for 



