Notice of some New Reptilian Fossils from the Purbeck Beds near Swanage

Abstract

H aving received from Mr. W. R. Brodie, of Swanage, a second collection of fossils from the Purbeck beds at Durdlestone Bay for examination, I find amongst the Vertebrate specimens some Ichthyolites and two examples of Reptilia the latter seem worthy of a woodcut ; they are small, and may be described as follows :- Specimen A , from the “dirt-bed*,” no. 93 in Mr. Austen's stratigraphical list†. It indicates a Lacertian genus and species, for which I propose the name of Saurillus obtusus . This lizard is represented by the right dentary bone of the lower jaw (see fig.), containing 13 moderately long, conical, blunt-pointed teeth, differing in form from those of the Nuthetes and Macellodus described in a former communication‡, and from the same formation and locality. The teeth in Saurillus are not so long nor so reeurved as in Nuthetes , nor are they compressed as in that genus ; and they are not broad and fiat as in Macellodus . On the outer side of the dentary bone are six nervo-vascular foramina in a longitudinal row, relatively as numerous and large as in the Iguanodon , and indicating, as in that and other Saurian reptiles, the scaly covering of the jaws and the equally reptilian condition of the salivary apparatus in the little Saurillus . Supposing the fossil to have come from a mature individual, the size of the animal must have been equal to that of the common European lizard Lacerta agilis . It was most probably insectivorous. The specific name refers to