CHAPTER IV. 
THE GREAT SEA-LIZARDS AND THEIR ALLIES, 
“The wonders of geology exercise every faculty of the mind — reasonj 
memory, imagination ; and though we cannot put our fossils to the question, 
it is something to be so aroused as to be made to put the questions to one’s 
self.” — Hugh Miller. 
The fish-lizards, described in our last chapter, were not the only 
predaceous monsters that haunted the seas of the great Mesozoic 
age, or era. . We must now say a few words about certain con- 
temporary creatures that shared with them the spoils of those 
old seas, so teeming with life. And first among these— as being 
more fully known — come the long-necked sea-lizards, or Plesio- 
saurs. 
The Plesiosaurus was first discovered in the Lias rocks of 
Lyme-Regis, in the year 1821. It was christened by the above 
name, and introduced to the scientific world by the Rev. Mr. 
Conybeare (afterwards Dean of Llandaff) and Mr. (afterwards 
Sir Henry) de la Beche. They gave it this name in order to 
distinguish it from the Ichthyosaurus, and to record the fact that 
it was more nearly allied to the lizard than the latter.^ Cony- 
beare, with the assistance of De la Beche, first described it in ijl 
a now-classic paper read before the Geological Society of 
London, and published in the Transactmis of that Society in , I 
the year 1821. In a later paper (1824) he gave a restoration ' I 
^ The name is derived from two Greek words — plesios, near, or allied to, | 
and saziros, a lizard. ■ I 
