FOSSIL REPTILIA OF THE 
2 
the bottom, had been preyed upon by some contemporary carnivorous marine animals. 
It seems as if a bite of the neck bad pulled out of place the eighth to the twelfth 
vertebrae. Those at the base of the neck have been scattered and displaced, as if 
through more “ rugging and riving.” Some creature which has had a grip of the 
spine, near the middle of the back, has pulled to one side all the succeeding vertebrae 
of the pelvis ; their adhesion to that part and, more or less, to each other, being 
retained. This wrench would expose the abdominal viscera, a tergo, where we now 
see the upper or inner surface of the abdominal ribs or sterno-costal arches. The 
intermediate and succeeding portions of the vertebral column retain their natural 
relative positions, as in the prone position of the carcass ; and the skull, scapular arch 
and appendages, pelvic arch and appendages, and the tail, show respectively their 
relative positions as in the entire animal. Many of the otherwise undisturbed vertebrae, 
however, have turned, so as to present their most extensive surface to the direction of 
the slow, cosmical, compressing force operating on their imbedding stratum. 
This is the case with the first twenty cervical vertebrae in the specimen Tab. I, 
which appears to have settled in the Liassic mud back downwards, their spines being 
turned toward the right side ; beyond the twenty-first cervical the vertebrae have 
rotated in the opposite direction, presenting more or less of a side vieu% with the 
neural arch and spine turned to the left ; but most of the spinous processes have 
been removed with the matrix in the original exposure of the specimen. The trunk 
preserves the supine position, exposing the broad coracoids ( 52 ), and pubes (64), with 
scattered, intervening, abdominal ribs. Part of the left pectoral fin ( 53 — 56) is in 
situ ; a smaller part of the corresponding pelvic fin (65—6?) lies across the pelvis. 
No partial force has operated after interment to dislocate any of the vertebrm, save 
the few terminal ones of the tail, which have disappeared, probably dragged away 
with whatever tegumentary expansion may have there represented a caudal fin. 
In the specimen figured by Dr. Buckland * the skeleton, as it is exposed to view, 
lies prone ; the vertebrae, whilst their matrix was in the state allowing them to turn, 
have presented their largest surface to the direction of superincumbent pressure, the 
spines of those at the basal half of the neck being turned down or toward the right 
side, wdiile those of the dorsal vertebrae have yielded in the opposite direction, both 
kinds presenting more or less of a side view. The thoracic ribs have slipped some 
way from their articulations, yet preserve, in the main, their relative positions, in 
serial succession. The anterior dorsals overlie the coracoids, and the posterior dorsal 
and sacral vertebrae overlie the dislocated parts of the pelvis. One of the thickened, 
short, and straight sacral ribs abuts against the right ilium. Upwards of thirty caudal 
vertebrae extend, in nearly a straight line, from the sacrum. The vertebrae at the fore 
part of the neck have been displaced, and in great part lost. Of the head little is 
visible, save the mandibular rami. The bones of both fore and hind paddles on the 
* Op. cit., vol. ii, plate x, fig. 2. 
