1048 
PROFESSOR OWEN ON SOME REMAINS OF THE 
sections, closely agrees with that of the granicones or assumed cores of the horns and 
spines of the extinct Lizard associated with the Marsupials at the Upper Oolitic or 
Wealden period in cur own island. 
In other, older, and larger extinct Sauriansthe osseous supports of such horns and 
spines are likewise, as in Megalania, the sole evidences remaining. 
It is interesting here to note the continuance of multiplied pairs of cranial horns in 
certain extinct Mammals of the earlier tertiary periods: as, e.g., the four-horned 
Sivathere and Bramatbere of the Sivalik miocene. In the Dinocerata (Marsh!) of 
the Rocky Mountain miocene, the number of such seeming cores comes still nearer to 
that in Megalania. True it is that objections to the term “ horns ” applied to certain 
elevations of the outer table of the skull in that extinct family, might similarly affect 
those marked f in the skull of Megalania, but the weapons which feebler cranial 
indications sustain in Moloch have weighed with me in the foregoing descriptions. 
What, it may be asked, were the habits of life of this hugh Australian reptile of 
diabolic aspect ? With regard to its small existing representative, the name Moloch 
horridus is expressive of the emotions excited by its physiognomy rather than indicative 
of its zoological characters, and the nature of such emotion may be judged by the 
nomenclator’s admission that “ the external appearance of this Lizard is the most 
ferocious of any that I know.” | 
It is nevertheless a poor harmless, timorous, little Lizard ; a contemporary it may 
have been with Megalania, and indebted for its continued existence, as a species, to a 
dwarfishness favouring concealment, and to such defence as its tegumentary spines may 
offer against the small existing and contemporaneous predatory enemies. The reptilian 
Megalania, from present dental evidence, seems to have been phytiphagous, and accord¬ 
ingly, like many herbivorous Mammals, it was provided with defensive weapons. These 
would be as available against the attacks of Thylacoleo as the Buffalos’ horns are 
against those of the South African Lion. But the time at length arrived when a more 
fell destroyer then either the marsupial or placental four-footed Carnivore came upon 
the stage. Then, I conclude, drew nigh the date of extirpation of every large animal 
that afforded meat to the Australian, so called, “Aborigine.” 
Hence the Naturalists’ knowledge of the huge species, so extirpated, rests upon recon¬ 
structions based on comparisons of their fossil remains. 
* Tlijlceosaurus (dorsal spines), Mantelt, : Phil. Trans., 1841, p. 131. 
Scelidosaurus (dorsal, lateral, subcaudal spines), Owen: ‘Monograph,’ in 4to. vol. of Palasonto- 
graphical Society, issued 1852, p. 20, plates 1-9. 
Iguanodon (carpal spines), Owen: ‘Monograph,’ in 4to. vol. of Palasontographical Society, issued 
1872, p. 6, plates 1 and 2. 
Stegosaurus (numerous spines—position uncertain), Marsh : ‘ American Journal of Science and Arts,’ 
vol. xix., 1880, p. 258. 
| Marsh : ‘ American Journal of Science and Arts,’ vol. v., 1873, p. 486. 
f Gray, loc. cit., p. 88. 
