38 
EXTINCT MONSTERS. 
The remains of fish-lizards have attracted the attention of 
collectors and describers of fossils for nearly two centuries past. 
The vertebrae, or “ cup-bones,” as they are often called, of which 
the spinal column was composed, were figured by Schelichzer, 
in an old work entitled Querelce Pisciuni ; and, at that time, 
they were supposed to be the vertebrae of fishes. In the 
year 1814 Sir Everard Home described the fossil remains of 
this creature, in a paper read before the Royal Society, and 
published in their Philosophical Transactions. This fossil was 
first discovered in the Lias strata of the Dorsetshire coast. Other 
papers followed till the year 1820. We are chiefly indebted to 
De la Beche and Conybeare for pointing out and illustrating the 
nature of the fish-lizard ; and that at a time when the materials 
for so doing were far more scanty than they are now. Mr. Charles 
Konig, Mr. Thomas Hawkins, Dean Buckland, Sir Philip Egerton, 
and Professor Owen have all helped to throw light on the structure 
and habits of these old tyrants of the seas of that age, which is 
known as the Jurassic period. They lived on, however, to the 
succeeding or Cretaceous period, during which our English chalk 
was forming; but the Liassic age was the one in which they 
flourished most abundantly, and developed the greatest variety. 
In the year 1814 a few bones were found on the Dorsetshire 
coast between Charmouth and Lym e-Regis, and added to the 
collection of Bullock. They came from the Lias cliffs, under- 
mined by the encroaching sea. Sir Everard’s attention being 
attracted to them, he published the notices already referred to. 
The analogy of some of the bones to those of a crocodile, induced 
Mr. Konig, of the British Museum, to believe the animal to have 
been a saurian, or lizard ; but the vertebrse, and also the position 
of certain openings in the skull, indicated some remote affinity 
with fishes, but this must not be pressed too far. The choice 
of a name, therefore, involved much difficulty ; and at length 
he decided to call it the Ichthyosaurus^ or fish-lizard. Mr. 
Johnson, of Bristol, who had collected for many years in that 
