MEMOIR 
ON THE 
SKULL AND SCAPULAR ARCH 
OF THE 
DINORNIS ROBUSTUS. 
I HAVE been favoured by the kindness of Dr. D. S. Price, of the Crystal Palace, 
Sydenham, with the opportunity of inspecting a series of bones from the Middle Island 
of New Zealand, which were obtained under the following circumstances. 
“They were found at the bottom of a pit or crevice, about 50 feet deep, in limestone 
rock, the upper opening of which was scarcely large enough to admit the body of a 
man, but gradually widening as it descended, measuring at the bottom 30 feet by 4 feet. 
The opening is on the top of a broken ridge of limestone rock, situated a few miles 
south of ‘Timaru.’ There are many such holes in the immediate vicinity, in all of 
which we found bones.” 
From this series I have selected for the present Memoir a mutilated cranium and 
lower jaw of a species of Dinornis, which, by its superiority of size over that of ‘‘a large 
kind” described in a former one*, confirms the accuracy of the reference of that 
species to the Dinornis ingens, and leads me to refer the present specimen to the 
Dinornis robustus. The following are a few comparative admeasurements of the two 
crania :— ee 3 
Dinornis ingens. D. robustus. 
in. lines. lines. 
in. 
Breadth of cranium across the mastoids........-.00seeeeeeeeereeees 8 8 4 0 
Length of cranium from superoccipital crest to premaxillary fossa ...... 2 9 3 7 
Breadth, greatest, of premaxillary ........00.s+eeeee etree eeee eens 2 4 2 10 
Breadth of cranium across the temporal fosse .......--+-+++-+ee+ees 2 8 2 8 
From these dimensions it will be seen that the present cranium, referred to D. robustus, 
differs not only in size but in proportions from that of D. ingens, the breadth across the 
temporal fosse being the same in both. his difference arises from the greater relative 
depth of the fosse in D. robustus, indicating more power in the temporal muscles, and 
is associated with mandibles which are more massive and broader in proportion to their 
’ Extract of a letter from the finder to Dr. Price. 2 Pp, 205, Pl. LII. 
x 
