A MONOGRAPH 



OF A 



DOSSIL DINOSAUR 



{SCELIDOSJURUS HABBISONII, Owen) 



OF THE 



LOWER LIAS. 



In the year 1858 a few fragmentary fossils of limb-bones were submitted 

 to my inspection by James Harrison, Esq., of Charmouth, Dorsetshire, obtained 

 from the upper part of the " lower Lias," near that place. They included portions 

 of a femur and of a tibia, in which the texture of the wall and the size of the 

 cavity of the shaft showed them to have been parts of a Saurian of more terres- 

 trial habits than any of those which had been previously discovered in Liassic 

 deposits : traces, moreover, of the extent and direction of certain processes, although 

 broken away in the fossils, were discernible, which led me to suspeat they 

 belonged to a reptile allied to Iguanodon. I therefore briefly notified the fact 

 of a Liassic Dinosaur in my ' Palaeontology,'* and indicated the animal by the 

 generic name Scelidosaurus.^ I propose, in the present monograph, to describe 

 these very interesting fossils as they have successively come under my observation, 

 and submit the proofs of the generic distinction and Dinosaurian affinities of the 

 extinct animal. 



• 



8vo. ed., 1860, p. 258. 



t Gr. ffKeXls, limb, aavpos, lizard; from the indications of greater power in the hind legs than in 

 most Saurians. 



