On Metriorhynchus Brachyrhynchus (Deslong.) from the Oxford Clay near Peterborough

Abstract

This species of <i>Metriorhynchus</i> was first described by E. Eudes-Deslongchamps in 1868 in his ‘Notes Paléontologiques,’ and was based on an imperfect skull obtained from Oxfordian strata in the department of Calvados (Lower Normandy). He was led to distinguish it from other species of Metriorhynchus on account of the shortness of the snout (‘museau’ is the word which he employed, under which term he included every thing in front of the orbits), the principal feature determining the species being found in these bones. In his table of Metriorhynchidæ (<i>op. cit.</i> p. 294) he defines it as follows:— ‘Museau très court, pointe des os nasaux atteignant et même dépassant la suture des os intermaxillaires.’ He mentions one other mutilated skull found near Poitiers, and now in the Museum at Paris. Besides this, Prof. Bigot, of the University of Caen, to whom I owe my best thanks for photographs of the type-specimen and for much valuable information, tells me that there is in the Muséum de la Faculté des Sciences at Caen a very mutilated skull with part of the vertebral column, and another fragment of a skull, which may probably be referred to <i>Metriorhynchus brachyrhynchus</i>. Apart from these, I can learn of no other specimens. The species is not mentioned in the ‘Catalogue of Fossil Reptilia in the British Museum’ (Lydekker, 1885) nor in ‘British Fossil Vertebrata’ (Smith Woodward &amp; Sherborn, 1890). Prof. E. Fraas, in his monograph on the Thalattosuchia, among which he includes the Metriorhynchidæ, compares it with <i>Dacosaurus</i>