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VIII. Description of Fossil Remains, including Foot-bones, of Megalama prisca.— 
Part IV. 
By Sir Pickard Owen, K.C.B., F.R.S., &c. 
Received January 13,-—Read January 28, 1886. 
[Plates 13-15.] 
I have been favoured to receive from my friend, Dr. George Bennett, F.L.S., of 
Sydney, New South Wales, a further collection of fossil bones “ from the Gowrie 
Creek, Darling Downs, Queensland.” Their correspondence in mineralized condition 
and colour indicates, and a vertebra supports by its degree of resemblance to the 
subject* of Plate 34, in the “Philosophical Transactions” for 1880, their reference to 
Megalania prisca. 
I subjoin figures of the vertebra of the natural size. The neural spine is repre¬ 
sented by a ridge which slightly expands at the hind end, Plate 13, fig. 3, ns, 
where it has been broken and worn down; but, as a “ spine,” it has been smaller and 
shorter than in the vertebra compared (Phil. Trans., ut supra). The abraded base of 
the spine, ns, occupies one inch of the hinder part of the ridge, traversing the mid¬ 
line of the neural arch, its greatest breadth being half an inch. 
The outer surface of all the prominences of this vertebra shows the effects of the 
attrition to which it has been subject from repeated rollings during the “ freshets ” of 
the river. A comparison of fig. 13, Plate 1 5, of the present fossil with fig. 2, Plate 35, 
of the ‘ Philosophical Transactions ’ for 1880, will show the minor length of the centrum 
in comparison with its breadth, a proportion which, with the reduced spine, bespeaks a 
sacral character, and suggests that the previously described vertebra may have come 
from the lumbar region. The “tranverse processes,” d, d, which, on the sacral hypo¬ 
thesis, articulated with iliac elements of the pelvic arch, have been broken off or 
ground down to their basal origin. The articular surfaces of the centrum, l>, c, figs. 1, 
2, 4, Plate 13, are, as in fig. 1 of the Plate above cited, oblique from above downward 
and backward, in basal contour widely elliptical, that at the fore end of the centrum, c, 
being, according to the Saurian rule, concave, the opposite, hinder surface, b, convex. 
The anterior outlet of the neural canal, Plate 13, fig. 2 a, n, is tranversely oval, and 
the canal there is partially divided into three channels by a low sharp ridge extending 
from each side of the upper half of the canal wall, and by a mid-ridge from the floor 
of the canal. The breadth of this orifice is twice its vertical diameter. The posterior 
outlet, fig. 2, n, has reverse proportions; the vertical diameter is 13 millims., the 
* Now in the Museum of Natural History, Cromwell Road. 
