6 FOSSIL REPTILIA OF THE 



at the margin of the articular surface are stronger ; there is a similar ridge above the 

 inner condyle. 



The femur of the Goniopholis (PI. Ill, o) is relatively longer, and is less bent than 

 in the existing Gavial or Crocodile. The tibia ( m and n, the latter bone presenting its 

 narrrovver side to view) is also both longer and thicker. 



Dermal Scutes. 



In the slab of Wealden stone from Cuckfield, containing the parts of the dislocated 

 skeleton shown in PI. Ill, there were imbedded, not only the long, quadrate, toothed 

 scutes ( a , b), like those in the Purbeck slab (PL IV, fig. 1), but a second form of scute 

 (ib., d) of which no examples had been preserved in the Purbeck specimen. Of this 

 second form detached specimens were obtained from the same formation and locality, of 

 which one is figured in PI. IV, figs. 2, 3, 4. These scutes are hexagonal, marked, as in 

 the toothed kind, on the outer surface, by hemispheric, circular or subcircular pits, and 

 on the inside by fine, linear, decussating lines, on an otherwise smooth and plane 

 surface. They have no articulating process, but have a strongly marked sutural surface 

 on the thick margin (ib., fig. 3), showing them to have been united together, like the 

 neural and costal plates of the carapace, and like the elements of the plastron, in the 

 Terrapene and Tortoise. The section (fig. 4) shows the depth of the external pits, the 

 texture of the scute, and its level and even under surface, d. 



From the association of hexagonal sutural scutes with the quadrate, oblong, toothed 

 scutes in the specimen (PI. Ill), it can hardly be doubted that they formed part of the 

 same exo-skeleton, and are probably from the ventral region. Some slighly modified 

 shapes are shown in the scutes marked f in PI. III. 



In the sixth part of the sixth volume of the ' Palseontographica ' of H. v. Meyer, the 

 author has described and figured part of the dermal skeleton of what he believes to have 

 been a Saurian reptile, consisting of bony plates, for the most part hexagonal, and united 

 by marginal sutures. These plates, however, do not present the uniformly pitted 

 character of the external surface, as in Goniopholis, but here and there in the series they 

 show a few irregular, large depressions ; the more constant markings are smaller, 

 apparently vascular foramina, and linear, usually radiated, impressions, in character more 

 like the markings of the dermal ossifications of the Labyrinthodont Reptiles. The 

 specimen described is from the " Dachsteinkalk,'' under the Winkelmaas Alpe, near 

 Runpalding, in Bavaria, and it is referred to the Psephoderma Alpinum. 



