Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/126

40 detailed in the memoir entitled "Belodon Plieningeri (H. v. Meyer), ein Saurier der Keuperformation," which was published in the seventh annual issue of the 'Jahreshefte des Vereins für vaterländische Naturkunde in Württemberg,' and was published in 1857. This valuable memoir contains a description, accompanied by numerous figures, of all that could be found of two skeletons of reptiles of great size, which were discovered near Stuttgart, in the "red Keuper marl" which forms the uppermost part of the Trias in that region. One of these skeletons was discovered by Herr Reiniger, the other by Prof. Plieninger himself. Both were in a much shattered condition, and were devoid of the skull. The remains of the first skeleton, which I shall call A, comprised, according to Prof. Plieninger, sixty, more or less complete, successive vertebræ, the pelvis, the hind legs down to the phalanges, the humeri, a great number of fragments of ribs, the sternum, and thirteen isolated crowns of teeth, some entire digits, and separate phalanges. Of these, Plieninger figures what he describes as the best-preserved teeth and digital bones—the right and left humeri, with attached fragments of the ulna and radius and of the shoulder-girdle, the left femur, the left tibia, with attached fragments of the fibula and the right tibia, and a massive bone, the nature of which is doubtful.

The remains of the second skeleton (B) include what Prof. Plieninger determines as:—the entire pelvis, the ilia being separated from the sacrum, which consists of three bones, two only of which are ankylosed; a femur; an ischium; a few bones of the feet; the two scapulæ; one perfect humerus, and the other pathologically deformed; together with the eight vertebræ which preceded the sacrum, with all their processes entire, and in their natural relations to one another and the sacrum.

All these remains were found together. At four feet distance on the same level, and continuing the direction of the vertebral column, was a second series of seven vertebræ, five and two of them being respectively associated together. No remains of any other animal, or any other individual, were found along with these two skeletons, which clearly appertain to the same species. The evidence which they afford as to the nature of the reptiles to which they belonged, is therefore of very great value. This evidence has already been discussed by Von Meyer (l.c. p. 268), who concludes that the skeletons are not referable to Belodon, and judges, from "a certain resemblance to the corresponding parts of Megalosanrus Bucklandi," that they might have belonged to a Pachypode, and possibly to Teratosaurus, a reptile from the same locality and bed, the jaw of which he describes.

In this view I entirely concur. In fact, Plieninger's figures, (which do not quite deserve the reproaches with which Von Meyer visits them) prove that the skeletons A & B belong to Dinosauria. But they also seem to me to show that one or two of Plieninger's determinations are erroneous. Thus, the two vertebræ of B, represented in tab. xii. fig. 14, are certainly cervical. The bone called "ischium" (tab. xii. fig. 5) is the united scapula and coracoid, having a characteristically Dinosaurian form. On the other hand, the