Small Skull Research Articles

SPONTANEOUS FRACTURE OF THE POSTERIOR CLINOIDS

Fracture of the clinoids has been observed by several physicians but is a rare occurrence. The case here reported is of interest because of the excellent demonstration of the lesion by means of the roentgen ray and because of the typical history. W. B., a young Irish-American, who had for years exhibited signs of constitutional inferiority, having a small, meager frame, long, slender hands and feet, high arched palate, adherent ear lobes and small irregular skull, was in many ways abnormal mentally, in that he was intractable and would not submit to much medical supervision and care. He was admitted to the hospital because of excruciating bitemporal headaches. These were so severe that he was unable to work. During a more than severe encephalalgia he was suddenly relieved of all pain. A roentgenogram the following day revealed a small sella turcica and fracture of the posterior clinoid processes of the

On Heterosuchus valdensis , Seeley, a Procœlian Crocodile from the Hastings Sand of Hastings

The specimen in the British Museum, numbered 36555, came there in the second Mantellian collection, which was acquired after Dr. Mantell's death. It is part of a thin ironstone nodule, 10 centim. long and 6 centim. wide, from the Hastings Sand of Hastings, manifestly water-worn, but containing vertebræ which have not hitherto been determined. The nodule (Pl. XII. fig. 7) displays the remains of fully a dozen vertebræ, which extend round the nodule in parts of more than one coil, so arranged as to expose the ventral surface or bodies of the vertebræ, towards the external margin of the concretion. These vertebræ indicate a procœlian Crocodile of small size; and although the remains are so imperfect, I refer them to a new genus, since their forms are different from those of any Purbeck Crocodiles or other described Crocodilia. The nodule displays some other vertebrate remains which may possibly belong to another kind of animal. Thus in a transverse fracture the outlines may be traced of two long ovals which extend in the same axis, and may represent the superior aspect of the parietal region of a small skull, in which each temporal fossa is 13 or 14 millim, wide and 7 millim, long. The external surface appears to small Purbeck Crocodiles ; and what might be the quadrate bone is seen to extend in an outward direction as it is prolonged distally. No proccelian Crocodile has the temporal vacuities elongated in this way; but from the imperfect preservation and small

Note on two Skulls from the Wealden and Purbeck Formations indicating a new Subgroup of Crocodilia

A n examination of the crocodilian skull exhibited last session by Mr. Willett, and of an undescribed skull in the British Museum, No. 41,098*, has brought to light a peculiarity in the posterior nares which, so far as I am aware, had been previously recognized only in the small crocodilian skull from Brook, Isle of Wight, in the Jermyn Street Museum, described by Prof. Huxley in a paper communicated to this Society on 28th April, 1875, and figured in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxi. pl. xix. fig. 3. This, and the great probability of the correctness of Mr. Willett's reference of his acquisition to Goniopholis crassidens , the skull of which was before quite unknown, have seemed to me to invest these skulls with sufficient interest to warrant me in offering a short account of them to the Fellows. I. Mr. Willett's Crocodilian Skull (Goniopholis crassidens, Owen ?). (P1. XV. figs. 1 & 2.) Viewed from above, the outline of this skull has the form of a slender isosceles triangle, the base of which, taken between the extreme outer posterior angles of the quadrate bones, measures about 13 inches, and the nearly straight sides from the same points to the premaxillary suture 25 inches. The uniform convergence of the sides is broken by a slight inbend in front of the orbits, by a small outbend at the 6th, 7th, and 8th maxillary teeth, reckoned from before backwards, and by the abrupt expansion of the præmaxillæ occasioning a deep lateraI notch

On new Species of Procolophon from the Cape Colony preserved in Dr. Grierson's Museum, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire; with some Remarks on the Affinities of the Genus

D r . T homas B oyle G rierson transmitted to me for description three more or less perfect small skulls, which all belong to the genus Procolophon , instituted by Professor Owen for some small reptiles from the Tafelberg. Dr. Grierson's specimens were collected by Mr. Donald White from Donnybrook, Queenstown District, Cape Colony. They are contained in a hard red ironstone matrix, often crystalline, which is apparently concretionary, and invested one skull much in the same manner as the clay-ironstone of our own country often invests Carboniferous fossils. The matrix can be removed only in part, because the bones and the cavities between them are frequently filled with brittle and crystalline carbonate of lime. Hence the thin film of external bone is often broken away in the endeavour to develop the specimens.

Contribution to the Anatomy of Hypsilophodon Foxii . An Account of some recently aquired Remains

In 1849 a block of sandstone containing a considerable portion of a reptilian skeleton was found by some labourers on the south-west shore of the Isle of Wight, near Cowleaze Chine. It was broken in two; and one piece passed into the collection of the late Dr. G. Mantell, the other into that of Mr. Bowerbank. Subsequently both pieces were acquired by the British Museum and reunited. Thus completed, the slab exhibits a continuous chain of some 18 presacral vertebræ, succeeded by the right ilium, the middle of which is crushed and hidden by an imperfect metatarsus. Below this are some long slender bones, which have received different interpretations from distinguished anatomists; and behind these are the left femur and a series of 12 caudal vertebrae. In 1855 a description of this fossil, illustrated by a plate, was given by Professor Owen, in his ‘Fossil Reptiles of the Wealden Formations’ (vol. 1855, Older Dinosauria, p. 2), where it is entitled “Part of the Skeleton of a young Iguanodon, I. Mantelli ,”—a conclusion towards which the weight of evidence then seemed to incline. In 1867 Prof. Huxley, from a comparison of its vertebrae with those of Iguanodon , and from the presence of four metatarsals in the pes, concluded its generic distinctness from Iguanodon Mantelli ; and in 1870 he made it the subject of a communication to this Society. Prof. Huxley prefaced this paper by a detailed description of a small reptilian skull discovered by the Rev. W. Fox in the same stratum