APPENDIX C. (OWEN ON PERMIAN SAURIANS.) 
H37 
C. 
Professor Owen upon certain Saurians of the Permian Rocks. 
In referring to Professor Owen some bones and fragments which he brought from Russia, Mr. Mur- 
chison was informed by that great authority in osteological subjects, that he considered one of them, 
the Rhopalodon Mantellii (Fischer), to be a genus very nearly allied to the thecodont Saurians of the 
dolomitic conglomerate of Bristol (Thecodontosaurus of Riley and Stutclibury), and quite distinct from 
the triassic genus Cylindricodon of Jiiger, which he is disposed to consider as not very different from the 
Hylaosaurus of Mantell. The bones (humeri) brought from Russia (where they also occur in red grit 
and conglomerate near Mensclinsk and at Kargala, near Bielebei in the government of Orenburg, see 
p. 155) have exactly the same structure as those found in the Bristol rock. In his last excursion to 
Russia (1844) Mr. Murchison obtained through the kind attention of M. Worth a very illustrative cast 
of a considerable portion of the vertebral column of one of those Permian Saurians, which has been 
alluded to by Major Wangenheim von Qualen and Dr. Kutorga. (See Verb, der Min. Gesells. zu St. 
Petersburg, 1844.) Of this specimen Professor Owen thus speaks : — 
“ (1.) The coloured cast is a series of twelve costal and two sacral vertebrae of a reptile ; belonging to the 
Crocodilian division of Sauria by the strong, short, rib-like processes from the sides of the two anchy- 
losed sacral vertebrae, — a modification not present in Enaliosauria, but introduced in order to give a firm 
‘ point d’appui ’ to the hinder extremities of those higher Sauria ichich occasionally walk on dry land. The 
articular ends of the dorsal vertebrae are concealed ; though, from the appearance of their margins, I am 
led to think, that they were not co-adapted by ball-and-socket joints, as in the tertiary and existing Cro- 
codiles, but were sub-biconcave, as in most of the secondary species. The vertebrae become shorter and 
broader as they approach the sacrum than in any modern and tertiary Crocodiles, or in any of the 
Wealden or Oolitic Crocodilia that I have seen ; and the anterior vertebra most resemble in their com- 
pressed bodies and very strong transverse processes the vertebra of the Palceosaurus figured in Messrs. 
Riley and Stutclibury s memoir on the Saurians of the Bristol magnesian conglomerates, Geol. Trans, 
vol. v. 2nd series, pi. 29. figs. 6 and 7. 1 hey are not identical ; the Bristol specimen having a more con- 
cave inferior outline than the Russian specimen, so far as I can judge from the cast. 
“ (2.) The bone, in two pieces, marked H., is a Crocodilian humerus, most resembling, by the breadth 
and flattening of the proximal extremity, the thecodont type of that hone in the Crocodilian order : it is 
shorter in proportion to its length, and larger than that from the Bristol conglomerate, referred, in the 
memoir cited (p. 354. pi. 30. figs. 1 and 2), to the Palceosaurus. 
“ (3.) The bone marked F. is the distal end of a femur, which by the sub-tetrahedral figure of the shaft- 
portion, also manifests the thecodont modification of that bone, and pretty closely accords with the figures 
of the femur of the Palceosaurus ( loc . cit. pi. 30. figs. 4 and 4 «), but, like the humerus from Russia, it is 
somewhat large. 
“ The materials which you have submitted to me are not quite enough for a satisfactory demonstration 
of the precise family of Crocodilian Sauria to which they belong, but they do not agree with the characters 
of the same parts in any Saurian that I am acquainted with, from the lias upwards, and they do agree 
sufficiently with the Bristol Thecodont Sauria, to render it highly probably that the teeth of the Permian 
Russian fossil, when determined, will exhibit the same thecodont characters.” 
College of Surgeons, March 5th, 1845. 
