part 1 .] Lyd either : Veriebrata from Tertiaries and Secondaries of India. 35 
mesozoic period. (See Huxley, Q. J. G. S., Vol. XV, p. 446.) At tlie anterior border 
of the specimen there is a smooth hollow on the inferior surface, which may possibly have 
received the extremity of a long peg from the anterior scute. A similar arrangement occurs 
in the scutes of Goniopholis crassideus of the English Purbeck; hut in that genus the 
peripheral pits are not elongated as in our specimen, and have consequently no radiate 
arrangement. 
The form of the pits and the articulations of the two remaining lateral surfaces agree 
very closely with those of the dorsal scutes of Pelodon from the upper Keuper and Rhsetic 
of Wiirtemburg* and the arrangement of the pitting also agrees very closely with that 
which covers the scutes of the allied Indian genus Parasuclius, from the Kota-Maleri beds. 
The present specimen is, however, of very much larger size than any specimens of the scutes 
of that genus from those beds, although we have vertebra in the Indian Museum from those 
same beds which belonged to an individual which might not have been very much smaller 
than that to which the Denwa scute belonged. I think we may safely say that the above 
scute belonged to the group of Crocodilia Parasucliia, and very probably to the genus 
Parasuclius, but that the species was probably distinct from the Kota-Maleri species. 
We have, in the Indian Museum, from a third distinct locality, an amphicselous ver¬ 
tebra of a crocodile from the Chari beds of Kach, which is considerably like those from the 
Kota-Maleri beds. 
This vertebra has an elongated and laterally compressed centrum, somewhat expanded 
at the ends ; the articular surfaces are vertically elliptical and hollowed ; there are large 
transverse processes, and a well-developed neural spine; the zygapophyses are concealed by 
matrix. The neurocentral suture is clearlj- marked and is placed considerably below the 
transverse process, the latter consequently rising entirely from the arch; this shews that the 
vertebra belonged to the posterior dorsal series, the rib not articulating with the centrum. 
The vertebra could only belong to the Crocodilia Amphiccelia or the Plesiosauria; the dorsal 
vertebrae of the latter order are, however, cylindrical and generally shorter than the present 
specimen, the proportion of the long diameter to the transverse diameter being in the 
Macrospondyliau Plesiosauri never more than in the proportion of 10 to 8, while in the 
present specimen these two diameters are in the proportion of more than 2 to 1. A similar 
proportion prevails in the vertebra; of many of the Amphicselian crocodiles, to which group 
our specimen must belong. The dimensions of the specimen are— 
Inches. 
Length 
... 31 
Breadth of centrum (transverse) ... 
... 14 
Height of centrum 
... ... ... 1-65 
The specimen has already been referred to by Dr. Feistmantelf as belonging to the genus 
Parasuclius. I am not, however, quite sure whether this is the case, but I think it is 
almost certain that the vertebra in question belonged to the Crocodilia Parasucliia and 
quite possibly to Parasuclius; it will require the discovery of scutes in the Chari beds 
to he quite sure as to the generic position of the vertebra. 
If the specimen belongs to Parasuclius, it tends somewhat to approximate the horizons 
of the Chari and Kota-Maleri beds; the former beds have been considered as the equivalents 
of the Oxfordian and Cullovian of Europe; but Dr. Eeistmautel has indicated the existence of 
Liassic forms in these beds, which tend to place them ou a somewhat lower horizon than the 
* Von Meyer Palceontographica, Vol. VII, PI, 43. 
t Rec. Geol. Surv., India. Vol, IX, p. 16. 
