307 
side : it shows the four apophyses very distinct. The chief specific 
difference which it shows is, that the internal process, m, is longer than 
in the iguana, or in the monitor. Each of these bones, in the fossil 
animal, appears to have borne eight teeth, which grew, were fixed, 
and were renewed in the same manner as those of the jaws ; but 
which were, of course, much smaller. 
We have, therefore, now sufficient grounds for assuming a place for 
this fossil animal. Its head fixes it irrevocably between the monitors 
and iguanas. But how enormously must its size have exceeded that 
of all the iguanas and monitors now known ! None of them have a 
head longer, perhaps, than five inches ; whilst, in the fossil animal, 
it must have been nearly four feet. 
Prepared by the knowledge he had obtained, respecting the head of 
this animal, M. Cuvier proceeded with confidence to the examination 
of the vertebrae. P. Camper had given a figure of one of the vertebrae 
of this animal, under the impression of the animal being one of the 
cetacea ; and M. Faujas has given four plates of them, as belonging 
to a species of the crocodile. But M. Cuvier, aided by an important 
series of specimens, found at Seichem, a village about two leagues 
from Maestricht, and by a memoir of M M. Minkelero and Herman, 
which accompanied the specimens, has been enabled not only to point 
out the several kinds of vertebrae, and to compare them with the 
analogous vertebrae in existing animals, but even to point out, with 
a high degree of probability, their succession, and the number of each 
sort composing the spine. 
A H t ] icse vertebra;, like those of crocodiles, monitors, iguanas, and 
the greater part of the lizard and serpent tribe, have their bodies con- 
cave in their fore part, and convex on their posterior part ; which 
distinguishes them decidedly from those of cetacea, in which they are 
nearly flat ; and still more from those of fishes, in which the two ends 
are hollowed into conical cavities. The concavities and convexities 
of these vertebras are, as in all similar vertebrae, more strong in the 
anterior than in the posterior vertebrae. 
