The Megalosaurus, as its name implies (compounded by its discoverer, Dr. Buckland, from the Greek megas, great, and sauros, lizard), was a lizard-like reptile of great size, “of which,” writes Dr. Buckland, “although no skeleton has yet been found entire, so many perfect bones and teeth have been discovered in the same quarries, that we are nearly as well acquainted with the form and dimensions of the limbs as if they had been found together in a single block of stone.”
The restoration of the animal has been accordingly effected, agreeably with the proportions of the known parts of the skeleton, and in harmony with the general characters of the order of reptiles to which the Megalosaurus belonged. This order—the Dinosauria (Gr. deinos, terribly great sauros, a lizard)—is that to which the two foregoing huge reptiles of the Wealden series belong, viz., the Iguanodon and Hylæosaurus, and is characterised by the modifications already mentioned, that fitted them for more efficient progression upon dry land. The Iguanodon represented the herbivorous section of the order, the Hylæosaurus appears, from its teeth, to have been a mixed feeder, but the Megalosaurus was decidedly carnivorous, and, probably, waged a deadly war against its less destructively endowed congeners and contemporaries.
No. 7. Megalosaurus.
Baron Cuvier estimated the Megalosaurus to have been about fifty feet in length; my own calculations, founded on more complete evidence than had been at the Baron’s command, reduce its size to about thirty-five feet:[45] but with the superior proportional height and capacity of trunk, as contrasted with the largest existing crocodiles, even that length gives a most formidable character to this extinct predatory reptile.
[45] “Report of British Fossil Reptiles,” 1841, p. 110.
As the thigh-bone (femur) and leg-bone (tibia) measure each nearly three feet, the entire hind-leg, allowing for the cartilages of the joints, must have attained a length of two yards: a bone of the foot (metatarsal) thirteen inches long, indicates that part, with the toes and claws entire, to have been at least three feet in length. The form of the teeth shows the Megalosaurus to have been strictly carnivorous, and viewed as instruments for providing food for so enormous a reptile, the teeth were fearfully fitted to the destructive office for which they were designed. They have compressed conical sharp-pointed crowns, with cutting and finely serrated anterior and posterior edges; they appear straight, as seen when they had just protruded from the socket, but become bent slightly backwards in the progress of growth, and the fore part of the crown, below the summit, becomes thick and convex.
A minute and interesting description of these teeth will be found in Dr. Buckland’s admirable “Bridgewater Treatise” (vol. i. p. 238), from which he concludes that the teeth of the Megalosaurus present “a combination of contrivances analogous to those which human ingenuity has adopted in the construction of the knife, the sabre, and the saw.” The fossils which brought to light the former existence of this most formidable reptile, were discovered in 1823, in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford, and were described by Dr. Buckland, in the volume of the “Geological Transactions” for the year 1824.
Remains of the Megalosaurus have since been discovered in the “Bath oolite,” which is immediately below the Stonesfield slate, and in the “Cornbrash,” which lies above it. Vertebræ, teeth, and some bones of the extremities have been discovered in the Wealden of Tilgate Forest, Kent, and in the ferruginous sand, of the same age, near Cuckfield, in Sussex. Remains of the Megalosaurus also occur in the Purbeck limestone at Swanage Bay, and in the oolite in the neighbourhood of Malton, in Yorkshire.
Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins’s restoration, according to the proportions calculated from the largest portions of fossil bones of the Megalosaurus hitherto obtained, yields a total length of the animal, from the muzzle to the end of the tail, of thirty-seven feet; the length of the head being five feet, the length of the tail fifteen feet; and the greatest girth of the body twenty-two feet six inches.