410 GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



The total length of the anterior limb could not have been less than 

 0.90 m., which allows of five phalanges in the loDgest digit. There may 

 have been more. That the digits were of unequal lengths is indicated 

 by portions of two in the matrix accompanying the specimens, where 

 the articulation of two phalanges falls opposite the shaft of one of the 

 adjoining digits. The phalanges were separated by a short interval of 

 • cartilage. The size of this reptile was near that of L. validus, perhaps 

 thirty-five to forty feet in length. 



The affinities of this species, as incidentally pointed out, are to those 

 Liodons which approach Clidastes. This is indicated by the many ptery- 

 goid teeth, the rudimental zygosphen articulation, the regular striae of 

 the bones, and the forms of the limb bones. In Mosasaurus the humerus 

 is shorter and the phalanges are longer. 



The specimens on which this species rests were discovered by Profes- 

 sor B. F. Mudge, State geologist of Kansas and professor of geology in 

 the State Agricultural College of Kansas, on the north bank of the 

 Smoky Hill Eiver, thirty miles east of Fort Wallace, Kansas. 



Numerous fragments of another larger individual were found by Pro- 

 fessor Mudge near the same locality, which belong probably to the same 

 species. Among them are a portion of the maxillary bone with bases 

 of two teeth ; the bases of the crowns where broken off are not com- 

 pressed, slightly but oval. A radius is a flat bone, more dilated at one 

 extremity than that of Clidastes propytlion. 



M. 



Length radius 0. 108 



Width radius, narrower extremity 064 



Width radius, wider extremity 08 



Width radius, medially 042 



This species cannot be confounded with the L. proriger, Cope, and L. 

 congrops. Cope, owing to its depressed vertebral centra ; from L. mitcMl- 

 lii, De Kay, the equal and numerous pterygoid teeth separate it at once. 



LIODON DYSPELOR, (COPE.) 

 (Proceed. Amer. Philos. Soc, Dec, 1870, p. 574.) 



This species is represented by numerous vertebra? of the dorsal, lum- 

 bar, and caudal regions, and other remains, which will, at a future time, 

 be more fully described than is possible at present. The vertebra? in- 

 dicate the largest niosasauroid reptile known, and are remarkable for 

 their form as well as size. 



The centra of the dorsals are much depressed, quite as in L. perlatus, 

 Cope, and Mosasaiirus brumbyi, Gibbes. Their articular faces are of 

 transverse lenticular form, the superior arch being a little more convex 

 than the inferior, and obtusely emarginate for the floor of the neural 

 canal. The superior outline is thus bilobed ; the lobes rounded. The 

 transverse curvature of the articular ball is quite regular, and not, as in 

 Mosasaurus maximus, more steeply inclined at the external or lateral an- 

 gles. A rather broad, smooth band separates the edge of the ball from 

 the surfaces of the centrum adjacent. The latter are rather finely striate- 

 ridged from the edge of this band. The inferior outline of the centrum 

 is strongly concave, and with two venous foramina separated by a wide 

 interval. The basis of a diapophysis on a lumbar is very broad, meas- 

 uring more than half the length of the centrum. In general characters 

 this lumbar resembles the dorsal, including the emargination for the 

 neural canal, but is shorter in relation to its length. 



