GIGANTIC LAND-LIZARD FROM AUSTRALIA. 
1045 
is a third lower but equally trenchant one (ib. ib., s), with a smooth canaliculate inter¬ 
space of 6 lines broad between it and the second ridge, with which it runs parallel 
and is nearly co-extensive. 
From near the lateral and posterior parts of the palatal portions of the skull the 
smooth arched roofs of both orbits (ib. ib., o', o') are preserved for an extent of from 
2 fo 3 inches. 
The shape and superficies of the curved ridges and channels on the prepalatine 
nart of the upper jaw indicate that such part was sheathed with horn in the living 
Megalania. This Chelonian character is associated, as I have remarked, with that of 
the osseous expanse over-roofing wide temporal vacuities. But the chief affinities, 
vertebral as well as cranial, of Megalania, are with the Lacertians, and more especially, 
as I have next to show, with a Lizard still living in and peculiar to the Australian 
continent. 
In the existing Lacertilia there are four known genera with horned species: 
Ceratophora, Phrynosoma, Metopoceros, and Moloch. In the first genus (hab. Ceylon) 
the so-called horn is single, supra-nasal, elongate, flexible, little different in texture 
from the common integument. In Ceratophora Stodarti (Plate 37, fig. 6) it is sub¬ 
compressed, pointed, of moderate length ; in C. aspera (ib., fig. 7) it resembles rather 
a short proboscis than a horn. In Phrynosoma regale (hab. California) a semicircle 
of antero-posteriorly, sub-compressed, broad, corneous spines (ib., fig. 8) crowns, as it 
were, the occiput; there are some corneous papillae in other parts of the head. In 
the Iguanian genus Metopoceros (hab. S. America) the species M. cornutus carries a 
single symmetrical short horn upon the nasal region. 
Only in the small Australian Lizard'"' (Moloch horridus, Gray!) have I found a 
head resembling in its proportionate breadth and shortness that of Megalania, with 
the following correspondences in the cranial armature, seven of the horns (Plate 37, 
fig. 2, and fig. 9, b , c, d, e ) answering to those similarly marked in fig. 1, ib. 
The horns of the pair (b), which are the longest in Moloch as in Megalania, are also 
the largest and widest apart; they spring from the sides of the upper part of the head 
near to but in advance of the occiput: they are the “ supra-temporal horns.” A 
shorter horn (ib., fig. 2, e) projects close to the fore part of the base of (b), and seems a 
repetition of the horn marked (e) in Megalania. The horns of the pah - placed nearer 
together and springing from the upper part of the head (ib., fig. 2, c) correspond to 
the “post-orbital pair” (fig. 1, c, c) in Megalania; but the large proportional size of 
the orbits in Moloch makes them more approximate. The most advanced horn (d) on 
the upper part of the head is single and symmetrical in Moloch and repeats the 
* Discovered by John Gould, F.R.S., in the Swan River district, and exhibited by him. as a “spiny 
Lizard allied to the Agamas,” at the meeting of the Zoological Society, August 5th, 1840: Proceedings, 
p. 94, 8vo., 1840. 
f “Descriptions of some new species and genera of Reptiles from Western Australia discovered by 
John Gould, Esq.”: ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ vol. vii., 1841, p. 88. 
