The ANATOMY of the HEAD of the GREEN TURTLE 



CHELONE MIDAS, Lath. 



Part I. The Skull. 



By H. Leeghton Kesteven, b.sc, Lecturer in Physiology 



and Biochemistry, Technical College Sydney. 



[Communicated by C. Hedley, f.l.s.] 



[With Plates xx-xxxrir.] 



[Read before the Royal Society of A r . S. Wales, September 7, 1910.'] 



Within the limits of the sub-classes of the Reptilia there 

 are striking variations in the skull, wliichinsome cases do 

 and in others do not involve rearrangement of the related 

 soft structures, such variations are more marked when 

 members of different subclasses are compared. It is pro- 

 posed in this and subsequent contributions to examine and 

 report upon variations in various reptilian forms. Since 

 my objective is primarily comparative craniology of the 

 Reptilia, it will be found that the skulls are described in 

 detail, whilst the description of soft parts is confined mainly 

 to such as may be expected to vary with the bony structures. 



The present communication deals only with the skull, a 

 description of the mandible and of the soft parts will follow 

 in Part II. As far as I am aware, this is the first attempt 

 to describe the skull of a reptile in detail. Throughout I 

 have used purely anatomical terms to designate the various 

 features described,'and have as far as possible moulded these 

 terms on the B.N.A. nomenclature of human anatomists. 



The skull of Chclone inula* or portions of it have been 

 described by Owen (1), Huxley (2), W. K. Parker (3), Hoff- 

 mann (4), Hasse (5) and others. None of these descriptions 

 pretend to completeness, nor taken together do they aggre- 



