Annals & Magazine of Natural History (Volume 7) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841. Excerpt: ... AND MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. SUPPLEMENT TO VOL. VII. SEPP. 1841. PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. ROYAL SOCIETY. February 18,1841.--A paper was in part read, entitled, " Memoir on a portion of the Lower Jaw of an Iguanodon, and other Saurian Remains discovered in the strata of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex." ByGideon Algernon Mautell, Esq., LL.D., F.R.S. When the author communicated to the Royal Society, in the year 1825, a notice on the teeth of an unknown herbivorous reptile, found in the limestone of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex, he was in hopes of discovering the jaws, with the teeth attached to it, of the same fossil animal, which might either confirm or modify the inferences he had been led to deduce from an examination of the detached teeth. He was, however, disappointed in the object of his search until lately, when he has been fortunate enough to discover a portion of the lower jaw of a young individual, in which the fangs of many teeth, and the germs of several of the supplementary teeth, are preserved. The present paper is occupied with a minute and circumstantial description of these specimens, and an elaborate inquiry into the osteological characters and relations presented by the extinct animals to which they belonged, as compared with existing species of Saurian reptiles; the whole being illustrated by numerous drawings. The comparison here instituted furnishes apparently conclusive proof that the fossil thus discovered is a portion of the lower jaw of a reptile of the Lacertine family, belonging to a genus nearly allied to the Iguana. From the peculiar structure and condition of the teeth it appears evident that the Iguanodon was herbivorous; and from the form of the bones of the extremities it may be inferred that it was enabled, by its lon...