173 
MEMOIR 
ON THE 
GENUS NOTORN ALS, 
IN a collection of bones of Dinornis, obtained by Mr. Mantell from a bed of voleanic 
askeS at Waingongoro, North Island, New Zealand, in 1847, I detected portions of the 
skull of a bird about the size of a turkey, with a broad and sloping occiput something 
like that in Dinornis, but with differences which led me to an extensive series of com- 
parisons, resting ultimately in the family of the Coots and Waterhens (Rallide), as that 
in which the greatest amount of cranial concordances was discoverable with the fossils 
in question. It was true that no living species of the Coot family was then known in 
New Zealand of larger size than the short-winged ‘ Weeka,’ or the Troglodyte Rail 
(Ocydromus australis); but, as the concordances accumulated in the course of com- 
parisons, I gained a conviction that the parts of the skeleton before me, scanty and 
incomplete as they were, were evidence sufficient that there had existed in New Zealand 
a bird which might be deemed the giant of the Coots, with so close an affinity to 
Porphyrio as at most to suggest only a subgeneric distinction, which was thereupon 
indicated by the name Notornis’. 
In the cranium of this bird (Pl. XLVII. figs. 7-13) the basisphenoid (fig. 9, 5) is flat 
and pentangular, as in Porphyrio (ib. fig. 3), with the anterior angle projecting below 
the base of the presphenoid (9): there are no pterapophyses. A slender ridge 
(fig. 9, 5) is continued from each paroccipital to the lateral angles of the platform ; the 
' «Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,’ January 11th, 1848, part xvi. pp. 1, 7. 
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