154 SIR RICHARD OWEN ON THE CRANIAL AND 
the Chalk of Meudon, the Lignites of Provence, and the Tertiaries 
of Sheppey, Argenton, and Brentford, are described as kinds of 
** Crocodile.” 
We owe thanks to Cuvier’s contemporary, though he added 
nothing to the paleontological characters, for the generic terms 
which later accessions to the Crocodilian cohort have found so 
useful. 
In the “‘ Divers Mémoires sur de Grands Sauriens ” * Geoffroy St.- 
Hilaire observes :—‘“ I end this first Lecture by premising that of 
the objects represented in plate vii. of the ‘Ossemens Fossiles’ 
there are only applicable to Teleosaurus the subjects of figures 1, 2, 
3,4, 5, 10,11,12, 14, and 17. The other objects (figs. 6, 7, 8, 9, and 
13, 15, 16) came from a more distant locality, ‘ Quilly ; they belong 
to another species, referable to another genus which I have already 
determined and named :—I shall treat of them, subsequently, under 
the denomination of Steneosaurus.” 
Geoffroy recognized that the Oolitic Crocodilian from Quilly made 
a nearer approach to the Gavial than did the Liassic Teleosaur. 
The beak was relatively shorter and the external nostril less 
terminal. “It has not,” he rightly remarks, ‘‘a skull so long and 
slender as in Teleosaurus, but longer and more slender than in 
Gavialis.” 
Of the relative ‘‘ narrowness of the temporal region, the extremely 
large crotaphite foramina, the lofty sagittal crest, and the lateral 
orbits” no mention is made as distinguishing Steneosaurus from 
Teleosaurus: it needs only a reference to the plate vii., above cited, 
and to the subjects of the figures 1, 2, and 3 in that plate, to see 
that they are Teleosaurian characters, but characters which that 
genus has in common with Steneosaurus. 
These quotations and remarks are premised in support of a 
rejection of a Kimmeridgian fossil Crocodilian from Geoffroy’s 
genus, to which it has been referred, as Steneosaurus Manselii, 
Hulke +. 
But I am, mainly, induced to submit this correction in order to 
show the characters by which the more recent Mesozoic Crocodilian 
has acquired certain agreements with, and approximations to, the 
cranial proportions and construction characteristic of the majority 
of Tertiary and existing species. 
A resemblance to the modern genera Crocodilus and Alligator is 
manifested in the proportions of length and breadth of the antorbital 
part of the skull; whilst the difference from the Mesozoic genera 
Teleosaurus and Stencosaurus with gayialic proportions of the skull, 
* «Mémoire lu 4 l’Académie Royale des Sciences, le 4 Octobre, 1830: see 
also ‘“‘ Recherches sur l’organisation des Gavials” in ‘Mémoires du Muséum 
d'Histoire Naturelle,’ tom. xii. pp. 148, 149 (1825). 
T Hulke, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxvi. 1870, p. 167. ‘A closer exami- 
nation lately made by Mr. Davies, Sen., of the fossils presented to the British 
Museum last year by J. C. Mansel, Hsq., has led to the identification of a 
large crocodilian head ”—“ covered with matrix, this head had been previously 
put aside as Pliosaurian,” loc. cit. p. 167. That this collection included 
Pliosaurian remains is true ; but that the crocodilian skull was referred by any 
authority of mine to the Sauropterygia is incorrect. 
