Lign. 227. Mosasaurus Hoffmanni.
(The original is feet by 21/2 feet.)
Remains of the jaws of the great fossil reptile of Maestricht.

Mosasaurus. Bd. pl. xx.; Wond. p. 311; Petrif. p. 193.—Of the fossil lizard of Maestricht, named Mosasaurus (lizard of the Meuse) from the river adjacent to the quarries of St. Peter’s Mountain, in which its remains have been discovered, I have given a detailed account at pages 193-196 of Petrif. A specimen, with the jaws, and bones of the palate armed with teeth, now in the museum at Paris, has long been celebrated, and is still the most precious relic of this extinct reptile hitherto discovered; a reduced representation is given in [Lign. 227]; and Pict. Atlas, pl. lxx. This is the Mosasaurus Hoffmanni.[655] The specimen is four and a half feet long, and two and a half feet wide; it consists of both sides of the lower jaw, with the right ramus of the upper jaw in its natural position, and the left, which is displaced, lying across the articular extremity of the left branch of the lower jaw: of the pterygoid bones, which are armed with teeth; of the left tympanic bone (os quadratum), which is but little removed from its natural situation, and connects the lower jaw with the cranium; one of the metacarpal or metatarsal bones, and some fragments.[656]

[655] Several fine portions of the jaws, and many vertebræ of this animal, are in the British Museum: see Foss. Brit. Mus. p. 139. In a splendid work, Histoire Naturelle de la Montagne de St. Pierre, by the late Faujas St. Fond (1 vol. folio, with numerous plates), there are admirable figures of the remains of the Mosasaurus.

[656] In the British Museum there is a cast of this specimen, in a case near the bones of the Iguanodon.

Lign. 228. Mosasauroid Teeth.[657]
1/2 nat. size.

Figs.1a,2a. Transverse sections of the crowns of the teeth, figs. 1 and 2 respectively.

[657] Reduced from figures accompanying Dr. Gibbes’s Memoir "On the Mosasaurus and three allied new genera," (with plates,) in the Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. 1849. This interesting paper comprises much information regarding the Mosasaurians of the Cretaceous deposits of N. America; but we cannot fully coincide with the author in his palæontological determinations.