PALAEONTOLOGY THE small area of Rutland affords prima facie grounds for the expectation that its fossil vertebrates would be comparatively- few ; and as a matter of fact not only is this the case, but there does not seem to be a single recorded specimen of this nature from the county which is of any real value or interest. All such remains of vertebrates then known to be in existence were recorded in 1889 by Mr. Montagu Browne in his Vertebrates of Leicestershire and Rutland, and, so far as I am aware, no additions have been subsequently made to the meagre list. The collection of the British Museum includes an imperfect lower jaw (No. 44,904) of one of the extinct marine plesiosaurian reptiles from the Great Oolite of Essendine, which appears to be nearly allied to or identical with the species now known as Muraenosaurus truncatus} It was presented by Sir Richard Owen in 1874. In the same collection (No. 47,170) is a series of associated bony plates of one of the extinct long-jawed crocodiles probably belonging to the genus Steneosaurus, from the Great Oolite of Belmesthorpe.^ Certain crocodilian remains from the same locality and formation which have been regarded as indicating the occurrence in the county of the genus Teleosaurus^ may be those just referred to as Steneosaurus. It is also stated that the Great Oolite of Belmesthorpe has yielded remains of a ptero- dactyl, or flying saurian, provisionally identified with the genus R/iam- p/iocep/ia/us,* but there is no record of what has become of the specimen on which this determination was made. According to Professor J. Phillips,* bones of the great dinosaurian land reptile Ceteosaurus oxoniensis have been obtained from the Great Oolite of Essendine. Remains of fossil fishes from the county, so far at any rate as species are concerned, seem to be even rarer than those of reptiles. It is stated, however, by Mr. R. Etheridge* that teeth of the pavement-toothed shark commonly known as Strophodus magnus (really a species of Asteracanthus) are extremely abundant in the Inferior Oolite or ' Lincolnshire limestone' ' See Lydekker, Cat. Foss. Rept. Brit. Mus. ii, 245, where the specimen is entered as CimoHosaurus, and the locality stated to be in Lincolnshire. ' Ibid, i, n8. The name of the locality is given as Belminsthorpe and the county as North- ampton. ' See Browne, Vertebrates of Leicestershire and Rutland, 174. * Ibid, 173. ' Geohg;j of Oxf. 253 (1871). ' Browne, op. cit. 199. I 17 3
