NOTES AND QUERIES. 



207 



perhaps, as those of the Wealden age, are nevertheless an extraordinary- 

 class amongst the fossils of that later period. 



Of Chelonians, we have the beautifully-preserved Chelone Benstedi, ex- 

 hibiting the whole of the carapace and a considerable portion of the plas- 

 tron ; but although we have the body, nobody, as far as I know, has ever 

 found the head of this or any other Chalk-turtle. As we may infer that 

 turtles in those times .were not headless, we may hope that collectors in 

 Chalk districts will use their endeavours to find some of the heads our 

 Chalk -turtles have lost. 



Besides the Chelone Benstedi, there have been found in the Chalk, por- 

 tions of the large species of turtle recorded by Camper as occurring in the 

 Maestricht beds, — the Chelone Camperi of Owen. Indeterminate frag- 

 ments of other species have been also noted in Professor Owen's 6 Me- 

 moir.' 



Of the Lacertilia, we have from the Lower Chalk of Cambridge, Maid- 

 stone, and Northfleet, the Raphiosaurus subulidens (P. lucius of Dixon) ; 

 the Coniosaurus crassidens, from Clayton, Worthing, and Charing, and the 

 railway cutting between Brighton and Lewes ; the Dolichosaurus longi- 

 collis, from Burham, a strange, small, wonderfully long, thin form, of which 

 only one specimen is known, one head and upper moiety being in the col- 

 lection of Mrs. Smith, of Tunbridge Wells, and a second portion, contain- 

 ing the posterior, abdominal, and sacral vertebrae, with portions of the 

 hinder limbs, in the collection of Sir Philip Egerton. 



Then of the swimming lizards we have the great Mosasaurus, some spe- 

 cies attaining a length of 25 feet, a genus made ever famous by the Canon 

 Goddin's specimen, captured by the French at the siege of Maestricht. 

 The British chalk-beds have yielded various portions of M. gracilis, chiefly 

 from Sussex and Kent. Another mosasauroid form, the Leiodon anceps, 

 has been found in a chalk-pit in Essex and in the Brighton railway- cutting 

 near Lewes. 



Of crocodiles, the English chalk — for it is of this English chalk we are 

 now solely speaking — has yielded Polyptychodon interruptus in the Chalk- 

 marl ; P. continuus, Lower Chalk ; Plesiosaurus Bernardi in the Lower 

 Chalk of Dover ; P. constrictus, from Steyning, in Sussex ; and some 

 other remains, possibly of other species, in the Chalk of Kent and Sussex ; 

 Ichthyosaurus campy lodon, from the cuttings in the Grey Chalk for the 

 Dover Railway, and from the Upper Greensand of Cambridge. 



Of the strange Order Pterosauria, or winged reptiles, abundant remains 

 have been found in the Kentish chalk, chiefly at Burham, on the hillside 

 of the Medway valley. The nature of these remains w r as first established 

 by Dr. Bowerbank, for previously they had been more or less doubtfully 

 assigned to birds. A large fossil wing-bone of Pterodactyliis gigantens, 

 from the Middle Chalk of that locality, — sometimes erroneously referred 

 to as that of an albatross, — was figured, in 1845, in the Proceedings of 

 the Geological Society by him ; and in the same paper, characteristic jaws 

 and teeth, and various bones of other species were briefly noticed. 



The expanse of wing of this Pterodactyle was estimated, from the pro- 

 portions of Goldfuss' P. eras sir ostris, at least 9 feet. Another gigantic 

 flying reptile, P. Cuvieri, was exhibited by the same geologist before the 

 Zoological Society in 1851. The specimen was a portion of jaw without 

 any traces of nasal perforations, 7 inches in length ; and Professor Owen 

 estimates the entire skull at close upon 2\ feet in length. The P. coni- 

 rostris of Owen, in Dixon's ' Geology of Sussex,' is a synonym of Bower- 

 bank's P. giganleus. Another species, from the Middle Chalk of Kent, 

 also in Dr. Bowerbank's collection, has been described by Professor Owen, 

 — P. compressirostris. 



