234 GIGANTIC TERRESTRIAL SAURIANS. 
SECTION IX. 
MEGALOSAURUS.* 
The Megalosaurus, as its name implies, was a 
Lizard, of great size, of which, although no 
skeleton has yet been found entire, so many 
perfect bones and teeth have been discovered 
in the same quarries, that we are nearly as well 
acquainted with the form and dimensions of 
its limbs, as if they had been found together in 
a single block of stone.* 
From the size and proportions of these bones, 
as compared with existing Lizards, Cuvier 
concludes the Megalosaurus to have been an 
enormous reptile, measuring from forty to fifty 
feet in length, and partaking of the structure of 
the Crocodile and the Monitor. 
* This genus was established by the Author, in a Memoir, 
published in the Geol. Trans, of London, (Vol. L, N. S. Pt. 2, 
1824), and was founded upon specimens discovered in the 
oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford, the place in which 
these bones have as yet chiefly occurred. Mr. Mantell has 
discovered remains of the same animal in the Wealden fresh-water 
formation of Tilgate Forest ; and from this circumstance we infer 
that it existed during the deposition of the entire series of oolitic 
strata. The author, in 1826, saw fragments of a jaw, containing 
teeth, and of some other bones of Megalosaurus, in the museum 
at Besancjon, from the oolite of that neighbourhood. 
