378 J. W. HTJLKE ON TWO CROCODILIAN SKULLS 



the orbital roof. The prefrontal is small, the lachrymal large, form- 

 ing the greater part of the front and adjacent lower border of the 

 orbital opening. The nasal bones, long and moderately narrow, 

 taper anteriorly to an acnte point, and they end at two inches dis- 

 tance from the single undivided external nostril. The prseraaxillaB 

 extend backwards on the upper surface of the snout for nearly four 

 inches from the external nostril, and they end here as acute wedges 

 interposed between the nasals and maxillae, about two inches higher 

 in the snout than the anterior termination of the nasals. The ex- 

 ternal nostril is dilated transversely; it is wholly visible on the 

 upper surface of the snout, not obliquely, terminally placed as in 

 Teleosauria. 



The whole of the upper surface of the skull, including the snout, 

 the upper part of the descending bar of tbe pcstfrontal, and the ex- 

 panded posterior part of the quadrato-jugal bar, is richly sculp- 

 tured. Behind and between the orbits and on the first-mentioned 

 bars the ornamentation has the form of large, more or less circular, 

 crowded pits ; in front of the orbits these are smaller and less close, 

 and in the snout they are lengthened and assume the form of short 

 shallow grooves grouped with some degree of parallelism to the 

 axis of the snout. On the front of the prasmaxillaa, where the sur- 

 face slopes down to the alveolar border, they are nearly absent, this 

 part being almost smooth. 



The occiput has the usual crocodilian construction ; but the par- 

 occipital processes are relatively larger, they project more directly 

 outwards, and they have a smaller backward slant than in extant 

 crocodiles. As in ^Hylceochampsa, Owen, from the Isle of Wight 

 Wealden clays, their outer ends project beyond a line dropped 

 vertically from the squamosal angle of the skull. 



Under surface. — The palate in the neighbourhood of the pre- 

 maxillary-maxillary suture (the exact form of which is not discern- 

 ible) is almost plane longitudinally and transversely. From here 

 a broad shallow mesial groove, separated by a slight elevation from 

 a less conspicuous longitudinal groove just inside the alveolar border, 

 stretches backwards to opposite the 8th or 9th maxillary tooth, 

 behind which the mesial groove is lost, the palatal surface becoming 

 gently swollen in the neighbourhood of the palato-m axillary suture, 

 the precise direction of which is no longer traceable. The pterygo- 

 maxillary openings are very large and long, as in the Brook skull, 

 to which reference has been already made (see Quart. Journ. Geol. 

 Soc. vol. xxxi. pi. xix. fig. 3), and the palatal bones form a cor- 

 respondingly narrow median beam. These bones appear to end 

 posteriorly at the middle of the palato-nares, and the pterygoids 

 applied to their inner margins form nearly the entire lateral boun- 

 dary of these openings, except for a small space just in front. In 

 these structural respects, as also in the long narrow slit-like form 

 of the palato-nares with slender pterygoid internarial septum, the 

 palato-nares in this skull repeat very closely the characters of the 

 same openings in the Brook skull, and, as in this, they approach pos- 

 teriorly the mesial Eustachian orifice more closely than obtains in 



