583 
a new Fossil Animal . 
of the Crocodile only ; in the other Saurian animals, however, all 
the ribs are thus borne. 
Colonel Birch’s specimen exhibits a series of 63 vertebrae ; but as 
they were dug loosely out of the lias marie in which they lay, 
several appear to be missing, and it comprises only the first 12 of the 
tail. Mr. De la Beche has a continuous chain of 18 middle dorsal ; 
and, in the late Mr. Calcott’s collection, preserved in the city 
library of Bristol, there is another continuous series of 9, the 8th 
of which carries the last short rib ; this specimen seems fortunately 
to have succeeded almost immediately to the former. 
From these materials we are able to give a tolerably complete ac- 
count of this part of the skeleton. 
Our figures are taken, unless where it is otherwise stated, from 
Col. Birch's specimen, which being a young animal, has the an- 
nular part still separate, the sutures not having yet anchylosed, and 
on this account exhibits this part of their structure, which we shall 
designate as the annular suture, more distinctly ; but in other points 
there is no variation in older specimens. 
The atlas and axis we have not seen. 
The cervical and first dorsal vertebrae appear to have possessed 
similar forms. The character of these, which extend to the 12th in 
Col. Birch’s series, is represented in fig. 1,2, 3. plate 41. 
They have no transverse processes ; the line of suture with the 
annular part is angular, and they have on either side of the body a 
double notch, into which appears to have been inserted, by a double 
stem, a tubercular process corresponding to the inferior tubercle in 
the cervical and anterior dorsal vertebrae of Crocodiles, and, like it, 
bearing the false ribs which protected the neck and the first true ribs. 
The position of this double notch is near the bottom of the side 
in the first vertebra, and gradually ascends till it almost rises to, and 
Vol. V. 4 E 
