FOSSIL VARANI!) AE AND MEGALANIDAE. 
378 
senting a large subtriangular surface, the lower angle of which indicates 
the place where the missing first hypapophysis had risen. About 2 mm 
under the articular ball a large subrotund surface indicates the traces of 
the broken «talon» which had to support the second hypapophysis 1 
missing on the fossil. On both sides of the centre, nearly at the limit between 
this latter and the neural arch, two small bony ridges may be observed 
faintly rising in the vicinity of the middle region of centre and terminating in 
a somewhat swollen proéminence which cannot be more precisely examined, 
being broken together with the odontoid process, closely before the limit 
of which the mentioned elevations must have reached their strongest deve¬ 
lopment. I stated the presence of homologue ridges under the form of small 
spines on the epistropheus of Varanus griseus Daud. These spines to which 
I give the name of spinae transversae are present also in 
other Lacertilians, although I was not able to find any allusion 
made to this fact in the anatomical literature consulted on the subject. 
The question arises, whether these spinæ transversæ are not rudiments of 
the second vertebra’s earlier proc. transversi, having degenerated by 
fusion with the centre of the atlas, and beir„g actually reduced to a 
most inconspicuous rudimentum. In that case, the spinæ transversæ ought 
to be homologous, or even nearly homotype with the processus trans versi. 
Neural arch rather narrow, widening backwards and forming the well 
developed, massive but narrow proc. obi. posteriores. The anterior 
zygapophyses are broken. Of the posterior ones, just referred to, that on 
the right side is complete, whilst the left one is missing ; the lower (arti¬ 
culating) surface is convex, blunt; the outer surface presenting 
a larger triangle whilst the inner, just opposed to it, forms a smaller 
and more pointed one ; the hind (upper) surface presents an 
elongate parallelogram whose inner side continues into the base of the 
large subtriangular surface formed by the hind part of proc. spinosus. 
The moderately prominent edge separating the outer and the lower 
(articulating) surface of proc. obi. post, begins by a very faint keel 
about the middle region of the horizontal outline of the neural arch. Proces¬ 
sus spinosus severely damaged, the whole anterior part, of it being broken, 
so that, laterally viewed, an arch is seen instead of the tectiform out- 
1 In Varanus also the hypapophyses (and the [caudal] haema pophyses) 
are only attached to the talon of their own centre, thus confirming the 
statement of Siebenrock, Leydig and Hoffmann (Siebenrock, Skelet d. Lac. Simonyi 
u. d. Lacertidenf. überh., Sitzungsber. kais. Akad. Wiss. Wien, Math. Naturw. CL, 
Bd. CHI, Abth. I, 1894, p. 263) and refuting the opinion of Sir R. Owen and 
•Gegenbatjr, according to whom the che vron-bones ought to be of an inter- 
virtrebral position (Siebenrock. 1. c.). 
