THE 



QTJARTEELY JOURNAL 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



Vol. XLIII. 



1. On the Skull and Dentition of a Teiassic Saurian (Galesaurus 

 planiceps, Ow.). By Sir Richard Owen, K.C.B., F.R.S., 

 F.G.S., &c. (Read November 3, 1886.) 



[Plate I.] 



In the year 1858 it was my good fortune to receive from Sir George 

 Grey, K.C.B., Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, a fossil skull from 

 the Triassic sandstone of the Rhenosterberg, which combined dental 

 characters, indicated by the sockets and fragments of teeth, most 

 resembling those of a Carnivorous Mammal, with the unequivocal 

 cranial structure of a Saurian Reptile. 



This interesting evidence of the Yertpbrate life of that geological 

 period and locality is described and figured in my ' Catalogue of the 

 Fossil Reptilia of South Africa,' 4to, 1876, p. 23, pi. xviii. figs. 6-11, 

 as a species of an extinct genus, Galesaurus, and as the type of a 

 Division of the Class Reptilia, subsequent accessions to which, also 

 described and figured in the same work, led me, by similar modifica- 

 tions of the dentition, to group them in a distinct suborder termed 

 Theriodontia (op. cit. p. 15). 



The collection of fossils from the same formation, in the locality 

 of ' Theba-chou,' Basuto Land, subsequently deposited in the Geolo- 

 gical Department of the British Museum of Natural History, by 

 Dr. Exton, which, together with the evidence of a mammalian 

 genus (Tritylodori), included remains of the reptilian genera Kiste- 



Q.J. G.S. No. 169. b 



