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II. Description of some Remains of a Gigantic Land-Lizard (Megalania prisca*, Owen) 
from Australia. By Professor Owen, F.R.S. &c. 
Eeceived May 13, — Eead June 17, 1858. 
In a collection of fossil bones from pleistocene ('?) deposits forming the bed of a tributary 
of the Condamine Eiver, west of Moreton Bay, Australia, recently purchased by the 
British Museum, were the three vertebrae which form the subject of the following 
description. 
They formed part of a collection composed chiefly of remains of Diprotodon, Noto- 
therium and other large extinct Marsupials, and presented the same colour, speciflc 
gravity and partially fossilized state ; but their anatomical characters were very difierent, 
and demonstrated these vertebrae to belong to a large reptile of the Lacertian order. 
These characters are, the well-turned hemispheric anterior cup (Plates VII. and VIII., c) 
and posterior ball (ib. h) for the articulation of the body of the vertebra with those of 
contiguous vertebrae, the tubercle (ib. d) at the fore-part of each side of the base of the 
neural arch for the articulation of the rib, and the contracted area of the neural canal 
(Plate VII., flg. 4, w): the latter character is extreme, and denotes the small proportional 
size of the spinal chord in correlation with the habits and powers of a sluggish cold- 
blooded quadruped. 
The neural arch has coalesced with the centrum ; the cup and ball are both placed 
obliquely (Plate VIII. flg. 2), the latter (ib. h) looking upward and backward ; both these 
characters concur with the single costal tubercle on each side, in determining the lacer- 
tian character of the vertebrae in question. 
The best preserved of the three vertebrae (Plate VII. flgs. 1, 2, 3 & 4) wants the right 
posterior zygapophysis ; the articular surface of the costal tubercle (flg. 1, d) is also 
abraded. The following are dimensions of this vertebra : — 
Inches. Lines. 
Length of centrum 3 3 
Length of non-articular lower surface of centrum 2 0 
Breadth of centrum, behind the ball 1 11 
Vertical diameter of centrum, behind the ball 1 4 
Vertical diameter of cup 1 9 
Transverse diameter of cup 2 5 
Breadth of neural arch above the costal tubercles 4 7 
* Meyas, great, and fiXulvu, to roam about; in reference to the terrestrial nature of the great Saurian, 
which was noticed under the above name in the author’s ‘ Lectures on Eossil Eeptilia,’ delivered in the 
Theatre of the Museum of Practical Gleology, Jermyn Street, ‘Synopsis,’ March 1868. 
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