Polyptychodon.[622]—The remains of another gigantic marine Saurian have been discovered in the Green Sand at Hythe, in Kent; they consist chiefly of the bones of the pelvis and hinder extremities.[623] The femur must have been nearly four feet in length. The long bones have a cancellated structure, without a medullary cavity 3 the outer surface is finely striated. Probably in a recent state the cells were filled with oil, as in the Cetacea. Neither the vertebræ nor the teeth of this reptile are known; but, provisionally, these remains have been referred to the same animal as that to which the large, conical, longitudinally ridged teeth belonged, which have been found in the Kentish Rag, at Maidstone, and in the Chalk of Sussex, and have been named Polyptychodon continuus.[624] Teeth of P. interruptus are not unfrequent in the Cretaceous series; and a portion of the lower jaw of this species, from the Chalk of Kent, is in Mr. Toulmin Smith’s collection.[625]
[622] Poly-ptych-odon; many-wrinkle-tooth.
[623] Geol. Proc. vol. iii. p. 449. The bones from Hythe were presented by their discoverer, H. B. Makeson, Esq., to the British Museum. See Petrifactions, p. 200.
[624] Owen’s Monograph, Cretac. Reptilia, Pal. Soc. p. 47.
[625] Ibid. p. 55. See also Dixon’s Foss. Suss. p. 378. Teeth of the Polyptychodon are figured in Odontography, pl. lxxii.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
FOSSIL REPTILES; COMPRISING THE DEINOSAURIANS, PTERODACTYLES, TURTLES, SERPENTS, AND BATRACHIANS.
III. Deinosaurians.—The Order Deinosauria (fearfully-great lizards) has been established for the reception of those extinct colossal reptiles, comprising the Megalosaurus, Hylæosaurus, Iguanodon, and Pelorosaurus, which, in their organization, present the transition from the Crocodilians to the Lacertians, and whose essential osteological characters Professor Owen has described as follow:—