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XI. Description of some Remains of the Gigantic Land-Lizard 
(Megalania prisca, Owen), from Australia. — Part III. 
By Professor Owen, C.B., F.R.S., &c. 
Received January 20,—Read February 3, 1881. 
[Plates 64-66.] 
Mr. George Frederick Bennett, pursuing, after transmission of the subjects of 
Part II.,"' his exploration of the drift-bed of “ King’s Creek,” succeeded in extricating 
other fossils which, from their size and contiguity with those previously exhumed, he 
concluded to be portions of the same individual. 
On the reception and readjustment of these supplementary fossils, which, like their 
predecessors, reached me in a fragmentary condition, my surprise at the additional 
armature of the animal, so exemplified, exceeded that with which I contemplated the 
evidences of the cranial weapons of the great extinct Lacertian. 
If, indeed, the last received fossils had first come to hand a conclusion that they 
formed part of some huge Armadillo might have been condoned. 
They consist of portions of the armour of a tail, and include three annular segments 
and the terminal cap of an osseous sheath, of which the two hindmost rings had 
coalesced with each other and the cap (Plate 65, figs. 1, 2, and 3). The anterior 
detached ring (ib., a, and fig. 4) may have come from a more advanced part of the tail, 
but the peripheral border of the hinder aperture (ib., fig. 4, e, e) fits that of the front 
aperture of the foremost of the coalesced group (ib., figs. 1-3, a, h). 
Each of the annular segments sends off two pairs of massive conical processes, like 
the horn-cores of the skull, but of larger size, being broader and thicker in proportion 
to their length and rather more obtuse at the apex. The cone forming the tip of the 
tail-sheath (ib., figs. 1-3, c) is simple and cap-shaped. 
The area of the detached ring (Plate 64) is of a wide, vertically oblong, or ovoid 
shape, 6 inches in vertical, 5 inches in transverse, diameters, with a moderately smooth 
inner surface. A feebly developed medial longitudinal ridge projects downward 
or centrad from the upper part or key-stone of the arch. The outside transverse 
diameter of the segment, excluding the well-defined processes, is 6l> inches, the antero¬ 
posterior diameter or length of the ring is 6^ inches. The thickness of the bony wall 
near the hind border is from 8 to 10 lines, decreasing a little toward that margin ; 
* Phil. Trans., Vol. 171, 1880, p. 1037. 
4 B 
MDCCCLXXXT. 
