CRETACEOUS FORMATIONS. 29 



of their locomotive appendages, prove that the Bolichosaurus v^^as more strictly a lacer- 

 tine Saurian than the existing genera, Fseudopiis, Bipes and Ophisaurus, which effect 

 the transition from the Lizards to the Snakes. 



Tribe, Natantia. 



Gemcs, Mosasaurus. 



The history of the discovery by Major Drouin, in 1766, of the gigantic marine 

 lizard called by Conybeare Mosasaurus, together with an account of the nature of the 

 formation in which its remains occur, are fully given by Cuvier, in his ' Recherches 

 sur les Ossemens Fossiles,' torn, v, pt. ii, pp. 310 — 320. The largest species oi Mosa- 

 saurus is calculated to have been at least twenty-five feet in length, and derives its 

 name from the locality on the banks of the Meuse, near Maestricht, where the newer 

 cretaceous deposits occur in which its remains were found. The finest and most 

 perfect skull of the animal was discovered in the quarries at St, Peter's Mount. 

 Camper saw it in 1785, in the house of the Rev. Dr. Goddin, canon of the chapter of 

 Maestricht, and writes : — " In this the greater part of both the upper and under 

 maxillary bones is entire, and a bone, with small teeth, belonging to the palate ; by 

 which it appears, the animal had not only teeth in the jaw-bones, but also in the 

 throat, as several fishes have, but which are never found in the mouth of crocodiles ;" * 

 and Camper naively expresses his surprise that notwithstanding all his endeavours to 

 convince his friends, he " never could prevail upon them to adopt his opinion, that 

 these bones belonged to the physeteres or respiring fishes." In fact, neither the 

 physeter nor any other cetacean or respiring fish, have teeth on the palate any more 

 than the crocodiles. M. Adrien Camper, the son of the great anatomist, first pointed 

 out the affinities of the Mosasaurus to the Monitors and I^uatia,\ in which latter genus, 

 as in Amhlyrhynclms, small teeth are present on the same bones, viz., the pteiygoid, 

 in which they occur in the Mosasaurus. The large fossil skull of the Mosasaurus was 

 yielded up by the Canon Goddin to the French army, after the capture of Maestricht 

 by the forces of the Republic in 1795, and it was transported to the Museum of the 

 Garden of Plants at Paris, where it still remains. M. Faujas St. Fond, who, in his 

 capacity as Commissary for the Sciences of the " Army of the North," transacted the 

 transfer of the famous specimen, gives the following account of its discovery : — 



* Pliilosopliical Transactions, 1786, p. 444. 



t In a letter to M. Cuvier, in the ' Bulletin de la Societe Philomathique,' Fructidor, An. viii (1790) ; 

 and in the 'Journal de Physique,' Vendemiaire, An. ix (1791). See also his ' Memoir e sur quelqiies 

 parties moins connues du squelette des Sauriens Fossiles de Maestricht,' in the 'Annales du Museum d'Hist. 

 Nat.,' torn, .xix (1812), p. 215. 



