Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/128

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42
PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
[Nov. 24,

must have been 20 in. long, if the drawing is correct. Probably therefore B was a larger animal, and the length of the shoulder-bones of A must be proportionally reduced. The femur of A is 271/2 in. long; the tibia about 20 in. long. The ilium of B seems to have been not less than 16 in. long.

In the Maidstone Iguanodon, the scapula is 29 in., the humerus is 19 ins., the femur 33 in., the tibia 31 in., the ilium 30 in. long; so that the hind limbs were much longer in proportion to the fore limbs, the tibia in proportion to the femur, and the scapula in proportion to the humerus than in the Stuttgart Dinosaurian. The hinder dorsal vertebræ have centra rather less than 4 in. long, and fully 4 in. high, whence Iguanodon would seem to have possessed a shorter trunk in relation to its limbs.

The associated remains of a Megalosaurus which Mr. James Parker, of Oxford, was good enough to show me some time ago has ilia which are 26 inches long, femora 32 inches; and the tibiæ could not have been much shorter than the femora. Scelidosaurus has the ilium 16 inches long, the femur 16–17 inches, the tibia 13 inches, the scapula 13 inches, the humerus 11⋅25 inches. The length of a dorsal vertebra is 21/3–21/2 inches. Thus, in the proportions of the tibia to the femur and of the humerus to the femur, the Triassic reptile comes nearer to the Liassic Scelidosaurus than any other Dinosaurian; but the limbs are shorter in proportion to the vertebræ than they are even in Scelidosaurus.

The facts now detailed show that, as I have already hinted, for the last ten years ample evidence of the existence of at least two genera of Dinosauria in the German Trias has been in existence.

But in 1861 Von Meyer described and founded the genus Teratosaurus upon a left maxilla with teeth, which he declared to be distinct from Belodon, and to have, in all probability, belonged to Plieninger's Pachypode. This sagacious suggestion receives the strongest support from the subsequent discovery of the maxilla of Megalosaurus[1], which is extremely similar to that of Teratosaurus in all its important features, though, in some minor details, the two are sufficiently different to enable them to be clearly distinguished. Hence I think that, until evidence to the contrary appear, it will be well to adopt Von Meyer's suggestion, and speak of the skeletons as well as the jaw under the name of Teratosaurus.

In the course of his memoir (p. 415) Prof. Plieninger refers to the discovery of the remains of a large reptile in the Upper Keuper near Basle by Prof. Gressly, and states that he has reason for identifying it with his Belodon (i. e. Teratosaurus).

2. Dinosauria from the Trias of Britain.

I had got thus far in accumulating evidence of the existence of Dinosauria in the Trias of Europe, when, looking through the memoir by Riley and Stutchbury on the Saurian remains from the Bristol conglomerate, I was struck by the resemblance which some of the bones they figure present to those of Dinosauria. Most

  1. See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv. p. 311.