II.—Note on Dinodocus Mackesoni, a Cetiosaurian from the Lower Greensand of Kent

Extract

In 1840 Mr. H. B. Mackeson discovered a group of bones of a large reptile in the Lower Greensand near Hythe, Kent; and in the following year the specimen was briefly noticed by Professor (Sir Richard) Owen, who provisionally referred it to the genus Polyptychodon. The fossil was presented by Mr. Mackeson to the British Museum, and ten years later the bones were described in detail by Owen, who recognised that they agreed most closely with those of the Jurassic Cetiosaurus, but still thought they might belong to the ‘crocodile’ whose teeth were known as Polyptychodon. Subsequent discoveries proved that Polyptychodon was a Pliosaurian, with limb-bones quite different from those of the Hythe fossil reptile, and Owen eventually realised that the specimen represented a species of Dinosaur, to which he gave the undefined name Dinodocus Mackesoni. Without adding to our knowledge of Dinodocus Lydekker placed it in the family Cetiosauridæ, while Marsh agreed that it was truly a Sauropodous Dinosaur, though of uncertain affinity.