MONOGRAPH 



ON 



THE FOSSIL REPTILIA 



OP 



THE CRETACEOUS FORMATIONS. 



Order— CHEL ONI A. 

 Genus, Chelone, (Turtles.) 



One of the earliest, if not the first, indication of the occurrence of fossil 

 Turtles in the formations of the Cretaceous Period, is given by the celebrated 

 anatomist Camper, in a ' Memoir on the Petrifactions found in St. Peter's Mount, 

 Maestricht,'* where, referring to some specimens which he had procured for the 

 British Museum, he writes : — " Another very beautiful specimen, a foot and a half 

 long, and about ten inches broad, I have been induced to add, because it contains the 

 anterior part of the scutum of a very large Turtle. Of this Mr. John Hunter has 

 an analogous bone from the same mountain in his valuable collection, but sent to him 

 under another name. I am convinced it belonged formerly to a Turtle ; — first, because 

 I have from the same mountain the entire back of a Turtle, four feet long and sixteen 

 inches broad, a little damaged at the sides, and a pretty large fragment of another 

 Turtle in my possession : secondly, because I have a similar one, but so placed 

 within the matrix, as to show the inside of that piece in the back of a large Turtle I 

 got in London, by the favour of Mr. Sheldon : thirdly, because I have amongst these 

 bones the lower jaw-bone of a very large Turtle, of which the crura, though not 

 entire, are seven inches long, and distant from one another six inches ; the thickness 

 is equal to one inch and a quarter."! In a collection of engravings belonging to my 



* Philosophical Transactions, 1786. t Ibid., p. 450. 



