Describer

Eudes-Deslongchamps, 1838

Time

Jurassic Middle Bathonian

Classification

Saurischia Theropoda Incertae Sedis \\\\\\\"Carnosaurs\\\\\\\"

Diet

Carnivore

Fossilsite

Calcaire de Caen, La Maladrerie Quarries, Departement du Calvados, France

Length

9 meter

Info

Genus - Typespecies

Poekilopleuron bucklandii is based on one of the first theropod skeletons found, but unfurtunately much of the skeleton was destroyed, prior to collection (Eudes-Deslongchamps, 1838) What was collected was destroyed in World War II. Poekilopleuron bucklandii was found in the Bathonian Great Oolite near Caen, France. The species is characterized by short and massive antebrachial elements and a relatively large manus (Huene, 1932)

The holotype and only known specimen, un uncatalogued partial skeleton, included 21 caudal vertebrae, several chevrons, gastralia, ribs, a humerus, radius, ulna, metacarpal I, manual phalanges, e femur, tibia, astragalus, metatarsal III, and pedal phalanges, was destroyed during WW II.

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Memoir on Poekilopleuron bucklandii, a large fossil reptile intermediate between crocodiles and lizards. Discovered in the La Maladrerie Quarries, near Caen, in the month of July 1835. By Mr. Eudes-Deslongchamps, Professor of Natural History in the Faculty of Sciences of Caen, Secretary of the Linnean Society of Normandy. (Extract from the 6th Volume of the Mémoires de la Société Linnéene.) Translation by Matthew T. Carrano, SUNY at Stony Brook, June 2000 portions by Jerry D. Harris, Southern Methodist University, June 1997 original page numbers indicated thus: {} Caen A. Hardel, successor to Mr. Chalopin, printer of the academy and learned societies.

1837 * Original citation: Eudes-Deslongchamps, E. 1837. Mémoire sur le Poekilopleuron bucklandii, grand saurien fossile, intermédiare entre les Crocodiles et les Lézards; découverte dans le carrières de La Maladrerie, près Caen, au mois de Juillet 1835. Mémoires de la Société Linnéene 8:1-114

By Mr. Eudes-Deslongchamps,

{5} §. Ist. Preliminary remarks. For twenty years, the naturalists of Caen have fixed their attention on the fossil bones that have been found so frequently in the quarries of the vicinity of this village, and precious documents for the geologist and paleontologist resulted from their zeal to recover these bones and make them known; and although they have yet published or communicated only a part of the documents that they possess, the natural sciences drew great profit from them. Those of these bones on which the attention of the world’s scientists had been particularly attracted are referred nearly exclusively to reptiles close to crocodiles, which the works of Lamoroux, Cuvier, M. Geoffroy-St.-Hilaire, and the author of this memoir have made known in varying detail. The bones of crocodilians, which are the most common, are not the only ones contained in the limestone banks in the environs of Caen, although it is easy to believe this; and if, up to now, these others have hardly been spoken of, this silence was principally caused by their imperfect

{6} state and the hope that new elements would come to be added to those which are already possessed, and render their identification and history more complete. A recent discovery has procured for me a fairly large number of bony elements, sufficient to characterize the species of this animal, although teeth or remains of jaws were not among them. I thought that it was suitable not to defer the publication of this which I possessed, except to rectify or confirm by the identification, if new materials, or relatives of this species, came to be added to those which I collected. These bony elements consist of twenty caudal vertebrae, a humerus, a radius, an ulna, two manual phalanges, a femur, fragments of the tibia and fibula, some tarsal bones, fragments of the metatarsals, and a great number of pedal phalanges; many ribs, of which several have extraordinary shapes leading to the belief that they were located amidst the abdominal muscles, some unpaired and regular were situated on the abdominal midline. I have yet several other elements, more or less damaged, whose position in the skeleton is not easy to determine. These bones belonged to a large, strong animal whose length must be between 25 and 30 feet. Initially, a rapid examination made me think that they came from a gigantic crocodilian; in effect, several of the bony elements were analogous to those of crocodiles, either as a whole or in their details. The reasons that led me to regard them as belonging to an intermediate type between crocodiles and lizards will be seen thereafter in this memoir; I could say in advance that I stopped with this identification only after deeper examination of these various bones compared to those of crocodiles and lizards, living as well as fossil. I believed for a long time that the bones of my large reptile could be referred to Megalosaurus bucklandii. Initially, their great size, their similarities with the bones of lizards, and above all the presence of the megalosaur in the Caen limestones, noted

{7} unquestionably by a tooth found at Quilly by Mr. de Caumont, described and figured in vol. IV of the Memoirs of our Society (p. 207, pl. VIII) and with which he agreed to enrich my collection, provided enough probability to this opinion. It is true that the comparison that I was able to establish, by means of the description and figures given by Cuvier (Oss. foss., vol. V, 2nd part, p. 345 and following, pl. XXI), did not confirm it, and that I had to take then the decision to consider my elements as coming from an animal still unknown to naturalists. However, it is not completely proven that the vertebrae, femora, and other bones described by Mr. Buckland belong necessarily to the portions of jaws and teeth, which alone involve the characteristics of the genus Megalosaurus: “Because,” wrote Cuvier (loc. cit.), “it is only by their zoological connection and their existence in the same quarries that one can conclude that they come from a single species: yet these zoological connections are of a fairly equivocal and mixed nature.” According to that it would not be impossible that new discoveries would make known that the bones found at Stonesfield in the Tilgate Forest belonged to a different species from that to which the teeth and portions of jaws belonged; as it is also possible that out animal from La Maladrerie had possessed the teeth of the megalosaur, but these results are hardly probable. §. IInd. History of the discovery. The history of the discovery of these bones is unique enough; it is only by a combination of happy and bizarre circumstances all at the same time that I came to reassemble those that I have. I hope that one will excuse me the details of this discovery; they are for me a sort of compensation for all the tribulations they have caused me, and one sees that if I came to save them from destruction and to restore, as far as it could be, a precious enough monument for science, it is neither without pain, nor without perseverance. I owe the first knowledge of the discovery of part of these

{8} bones to Mr. Bourienne, a medical doctor and our colleague. He came to my home one morning to inform me that he had seen in passing, in a construction quarry on the Rue de Bayeux, at Bourg-l’Abbé (one of the country lanes of Caen), a sizeable block of stone in which large bones were found; but that he had to hasten me, because around the stone there had been the child-amateurs, armed with hammers, who amuse themselves by butchering these bones, whose presence in the stone excited their curiosity. I ran there. The vandals were no longer there, but I saw the despairing traces of their presence. The stone was chipped everywhere where the bones had appeared, and these were broken in part; I carefully collected all the bone fragments that had fallen around. The workmen were not there, it was Sunday, I went to the house of the contractor to which the building site belonged; another disappointment, he had gone to the country and would not return until the evening. My poor stone was thus going to be exposed, during a long dangerous day, to the assaults of the neighbors, the curious, the passing, and that in an oft-frequented place! This delay was still fatal to my bones; because the next morning, when I acquired the block of stone, I saw unequivocal marks of new degradations; still I carefully collected the pieces. Thanks to the good offices of an inhabitant of that quarter who came with me, from door to door, everywhere that he thought someone had taken the fragments, in large part I managed to recover them. I learned from the masons of the building site that my block came from one of the quarries of La Maladrerie, a village situated a quarter of a mile from there, and that other blocks containing bones and from the same quarry had been brought into the village, without being able to tell me to which building sites. I traversed the village during two days; I got information in the building sites, from the masons, from the contractors; I discovered nothing. I visited the quarry from which my block had been taken; I descended there(1)

{9}; I as shown the place from which it had been extracted, but I could not make suitable research there; it was recovered from several cart-loads of fill. The workmen gave me some small, insignificant pieces that they had kept; they confirmed for me that another block containing bones had been transported into the village, but without being able to indicate the place to me. The attentive examination of the bones contained in my block, and the readjustment of the fragments that I was able to reassemble, gave me for a result: the upper end of a femur; a fairly large number of phalanges of very strong size, among which are five unguals; some short spongy bones in very poor condition, and some portions of long bones which appeared to me to belong to the metatarsals. Four or five days after the discovery of this first block, Mr. Blin, chemistry preparator in the faculty of Caen, came to bring me some unidentified bone fragments stuck to pieces of limestone; he told me that he got them from a contractor of his acquaintance who gave them to him, and that they had been found in a sizeable stone found in La Maladrerie, which had been at his building site for several days. Accompanied by Mr. Blin, I went at once to this building site, situated near the port on the Basse-rue; it was time: the bone-bearing stone, installed, cut and scraped, had been broken in place to form the lintel of a window. I acquired it and carefully collected the small bony fragments that this trimming had removed. The sizeable stone was prism-shaped, with a square base of three and a half feet and one foot on a side; at the two ends, I noticed the well-characterized cross-section of a vertebra, which gave me hope that an uninterrupted series of vertebrae would be found along the axis of the cut piece. My conjecture would be found true; I recovered from this piece seven nearly complete vertebrae, and two others damaged, which were showing at the two ends; chevrons [= “forked bones”] were found in place with them as well; these vertebrae were from the middle region of the tail. It will be seen, in the chapter where the vertebrae are described, the inductions by which I was again led to suppose that these were crocodilian bones.

{10} About eight hours after, one of the workmen from the quarry that produced the (1) At La Maladrerie, the quarries are worked by subterranean galleries where one descends by shafts. See the memoir of Mr. Le Neuf of Neuville, 1st vol. of the Memoirs of our Society. aforementioned bones arrived at my house; he had a great number of bones in a handkerchief, reduced to fragments and mixed; they were entirely removed from the stone. One could guess the displeasure that I felt that I had not been informed in time; I at least put the fragments in order so that I could easily understand to reconnect them. The workmen told me that in removing this stone in which bones were not suspected, although it was close to the point from which the other bone-bearing blocks had been extracted, it was split down the middle and then revealed all these bones, of which the majority were detached by breaking, and that he had removed the rest, very carefully, with the stroke of a granite hammer(1). I had already given well to the devil my misfortune and his granite hammer, because it necessarily lost a part of the fragments, as I saw afterwards when I sorted out and reconnected all those that had been brought to me. I restored thus a dozen vertebrae much better than I had dared to hope when I first saw all these mixed fragments. These vertebrae followed those that I already had, but a considerable intermediate series is lacking. I was not yet at the end of the adventure. Around three weeks after these discoveries, at the same moment when I had left for the country, I saw a quarry workman arrive at my door, all in sweat, on the most ill-tempered hack of a horse I had seen in my life, who passed by his arms a packet full of bone fragments. It was a pity to see the state of this debris, which had been so mistreated, the majority being thus made into powder. He told me that they were from the same quarry as those that I already had; that in hauling the stone, it was not noticed that it contained bones(2); that

{11} it had been transported to Mouen, a village three miles from Caen; that the masons had wanted to sell it and having found it full of bones, had it refused; that it had gone to the contractor, that he had broken it, partly in anger to see so beautiful a block weighing more than 60 pounds refused; that he had remembered when I bought the bones that his comrades had brought me; that he had collected the debris and brought it to me. – One may guess the state in which such very fragile bones must have been, broken down by hits from a granite hammer by a man in anger who believed he had lost the fruit of his labor, then brought the distance of three miles, in a handkerchief packet, and shaken by the trot of an ill-tempered hack! I examined the (1) The granite hammer is a sort of wide hammer, short-hafted, with which the masons cut the rubble. (2) I believe it easily enough: the workmen worked in their galleries, illuminated only by a small candle; the pulverized debris of the stone, which is named chaussin in our country, could have masked the edge of bones visible on some points of the surface of the stone. When the tools break the bones and pulverize them, the resulting powder is white, although their rusty yellow color slices well enough on the bottom of the stone when they are broken contents of the handkerchief, all the while murmuring: there I surveyed a great number of fragments that seemed to me to belong to the large femur whose superior end I already had, a great quantity of pieces that must belong to a large flat bone, portions of a long bone smaller than the femur, more fragments of ribs, etc. The workman told me that more bones still remained in the stone, and that it was on the great road in a stone-yard belonging to Miss Thomine. Happily I knew this person; and as I could not go that instant to Mouen, I wrote immediately and sent the letter by express, with a plea that the refused stone be reserved, without touching it, and that I would take it on my account. There was undoubtedly what plagues such significant objects for science, in large part, had fallen under the blows of my quarryman. Everything considered, I owe him for the discovery; because without the advice that he gave me, all the remains would have been infallibly lost; it was seen afterwards that the remains contained precisely the most interesting pieces. There is much place to fear that a similar chance will not always be presented, showing a collection of pieces so singular, so fragile, so well preserved, situated with regard to one another in such a manner that it was possible for me to recover, at least I think, their natural relationships. Because I could, I went to Mouen: I give many thanks to the Thomine family for the promptness that they sent to reserve the block for me, and furnished all the means to benefit from it. I had the stone cut down and

{12} worked it with precaution under my eyes; I derived 12 to 15 small blocks, all penetrated with bones; I numbered them and enveloped them in old linens; I carefully collected the bony debris that was detached during the working, just as a fairly great number left by my quarryman on the place of disaster; the entirety forms a cart-load that I had transported to my house, where I worked my blocks with available precautions. §. IIIrd. Restoration of the bony elements. Thus there I am finally as possessor of my treasure; but in what state, great God! The least inconvenient is still, to my eyes, that the elements which compose it are in a thousand fragments; the worst of the affair is that all the fragments are for the most part mixed, estranged, cleanly. For the people who do not look there very near, as the quarries, it is very possible that they did not survey the presence of bones. mingled; how to recover amidst this chaos? Some bones of which the forms are not known to me, a thousand fragments that it is necessary to try to reunite in order to reform these bones; which will tell me if this or that fragment belongs to this or that bone, to this one rather than that one! But the most hopeless is that most of the fragments are lost, that the others have their breaks chipped, rounded; how to bring together then the fractured parts!… Cuvier, in his discourse that would be a preamble to his immortal researches on fossil bones, speaking of the great difficulties as he tried to connect to each of their species the numerous bones, more or less isolated, that he found in the plasteries of Paris, regretted not having in his possession the almighty trumpet of the Last Judgement, to command each bone to go to its place; his genius and vast anatomical knowledge have replaced this trumpet that he implored. It has been very necessary for me also, who had neither his genius nor his knowledge, to extricate a more difficult step, under certain relationships, than these which he had so gloriously overcome. The desire to save for paleontological science such precious remains of an ancient inhabitant of our globe stirred my zeal up to enthusiasm and revived my courage. I was not a novice to similar work: several times already I had successfully restored and remade, piece by piece, interesting fossils

{13} whose extreme fragility, along with the few precautions taken in extracting and transporting them, had put them into a deplorable state. My first care was to create a certain order for myself and to arrange all my fragments according to it: the products of resemblance, tissue, nuances in coloration, the direction of bony fibers, the presence of small dendrites, and a thousand outlines or fugitive characters that I could not relate but that the study and comparison of the moment suggested to me, were my principle guides. I established some centers that furnished me the largest fragments, some other smaller fragments were joined to these; soon the forms were marked, the chaos managed little by little, and I finished to see approximately what I had been dealing with. The greatest obstacle always came from those pieces either completely lost or so mistreated that I could not attach their neighbors; the absence of the first prevented me from reconciling other, present ones with the pieces to which they evidently belonged. It must not be neglected to reconcile the smaller fragments, when I could find their place; how many times did they serve to bring together many larger pieces that, without them, would have remained isolated! But also that having obtained a result from fruitless trials; how many times had I put together fractures that did not match, and whose placement had to be sought elsewhere at another moment. Sometimes the chance served me; in less than no time several pieces were recovered that soon indicated to me the place of certain others left in reserve; more frequently I passed entire hours without being able to reconcile a single piece. To be exposed to fewer fruitless trials, all my fragments, classed in small cardboard boxes, were ranged on an immense table. In order that my centers would speak out more, the boxes containing the fragments supposed to belong to each of them were placed around it; I took each of these centers and their dependents in turn; when one bored me, I passed to another. Finally through fumblings, time and patience (I was employed there for close to two months), I had obtained some satisfying results. In truth, a great number of fragments remained that I was not able to place, but their

{14} absence provides hardly any inconvenience other than returning the restored bones a little less complete, a little more or a little less chipped. I was certain that no important bony piece, included in what I had had at my disposal, had escaped me, and that it would be easy to restore by thought what the others need in order to be completed. I served myself to stick my pieces with Arabic gum dissolved in water to the consistency of pulp. I was careful to only interpose the thinnest possible layer between the fractures, in order to avoid deformations; without this precaution, while one bone was remade by means of a great number of fragments, the last to place, which acted as key (so to speak), only having been able to be reconciled. To measure that a fragment found was restuck, I let it dry having applied it to another; it was necessary for me to employ all sorts of expedients so that in drying these fragments remained in a good position, which was not always easy, particularly when the crack was very thin. I would not finish if I mentioned the multiple maneuvers, some fruitful, some without success, that I needed to try in order to end this ungrateful and fastidious work. §. IVth. Remarks on the restoration of the bony elements. One will make probably two principal remarks on my bone-setting and, while accepting my zeal and patience, one could doubt the value of the results obtained. Could it not happen, and has it not in effect happened that, allured by a certain resemblance, I was mistaken in my reattachments, that I had not put to one bone that which belonged to another, from one end to the other, and, as is expressed very well in vulgar diction, that I did not take a heel and place it at the leg? I respond that this fear was ceaselessly pressed on my spirit, and that I put all my attention on avoiding this hybrid mixing which would only have produced a ridiculous bundle of sticks. I even think that this inconvenience cannot happen, if one puts a certain rigor into the suitability of connections: the cracks are nearly always

{15} of a reciprocal configuration, such that it is impossible that a fractured surface can be applied exactly to any other that that with which it corresponded at the moment to the solution of continuity. This was my guide and my safeguard. I judged the nuances of each region of bone, the direction of fibers, the thickness of the compact tissue, and a thousand other marks that proclaim with difficulty to an attentive eye, and that one has soon made by reassessing all the small pieces so many times; because at the end I know them nearly individually. Also the number of fruitless chances diminished rapidly when this forced study was made; it was easy for me to establish a class of piece that I hardly hoped to put back in place, because its intermediates were lost. As to the remains, I conserved the refitted bones; one could always note by intuition whether I was mistaken. I also conserved the pieces that I could not replace in small bottles of glass; they are classed according to whether they should belong to this or that bony element, or else as indeterminable. I do not doubt that it would be possible to replace more, with a new access to zeal; work that, I think, would not learn anything new, regarding the number and form of the elements that I reproduced in a more or less complete state. Another remark could be made regarding the solidity and durability of the bones thus remade. Without doubt, it would be unfortunate if so much sorrow and care did not come to anything but an ephemeral duration: but it is already much to have been able, by these means, to describe these bones, to draw them, and to make known their existence to some scientists whose testimony would be enough to give them the importance and authenticity demanded by science. I am persuaded that the inconvenience is to fear for them not more than for most of the objects that ornament our museums, and that their durability, to take a point of comparison, will far outlast those which have so laboriously reconstructed them, however long that it is(1)

{16}. The gum, employed alone, has the inconvenience of attracting humidity during cold and humid times, and a part of the fragments could then be unglued; in every case, these alternatives (1) I have ten good vertebrae from a large crocodilian that I extracted by fragments from a block from the quarries of the village of Allemagne, near Caen; they have been reconnected with putty like the bones of my great Saurian from the quarries of La Maladrerie. In the six years since they were thus prepared, they did not undergo the slightest of softening and hardening were eliminated by altering the composition of the gum and removing its agglutinating properties. To obviate this inconvenience, I employed concurrently with it, while it is hard, a putty made with chalk and linseed oil to harden it faster. I used it at two degrees of consistency: 1st in a paste state, to fill the intervals which can be found between the fragments, either because of the loss of their salient angles, or to replace those which are lost and whose absence would occasion voids; 2nd while the first preparation is very hard and firm, I use the same putty near liquid; I coat the reglued lines and the same the entire surface of the bone, and I make it penetrate the composition by applying it with my finger where porosities are found. When this coat is well hardened, I scrape it with an appropriate instrument and remove all that which could not fit in the troughs or fissures. The gum is thus protected from the humidity; the entirety finishes by acquiring a considerably durability. In other circumstances, I have tried various proceedings to reglue, either by heat or cold; those that I indicate here seemed the surest, the simplest, and above all the most convenient. The blocks of stone, from which I disengaged the bones myself, have given me infinitely less evil and have had results much more fruitful for me; I can say that I tried all the possible choices. If they had tested the fate of others, it is certain that they would have furnished me nearly nothing, because chance required that they confined the most fragile pieces and at the same time the most important for the identification of the animal. I had two views to follow to discover the contained bones: either to partly disengage them, leaving them to adhere to the stone, or to isolate them entirely, as had been done forcibly to those that were brought to me by the workmen. This last choice offered the double advantage of permitting studying the bones on all their faces, and not exposing them to leave others in the stone, which could not have missed happening;

{17} because, in several points, one was nearly confused with the others; but it was more or less necessary to break them in order to extract them, and perhaps mutilate them without resources. Thus the first choice seemed preferable regarding the integrity and solidity of the pieces and perhaps their natural relationships to each other. But, when I wanted to, I was not able to proceed in this manner: the blocks, of an excessively unequal hardness in very closely brought together points, were in others fissured in alteration, they are strongly solid, much more so than they came out of the stone, because then their fragments broke at the least contact. several directions; they had been broken by the first blows of the hammer and chisel. The bones were in general in the following state: firm enough in their middle parts and where existed a fairly thick bed of compact tissue, but nearly everywhere filled with fissures; the ends, entirely spongy, were of an extreme fragility to the point of being crushed under the pressure of a finger. Where compact tissue was found, the bones ordinarily only adhered very little to the stone; and, when they were sufficiently uncovered, the least force detached them, not whole, because they were separated in splinters at the places of the fissures. The spongy ends, in contrast, adhered strongly; if I had wanted to disengage them by sculpting the stone with little blows, the commotions that they produced would have reduced them to powder at the first attempts. There was only one course to take, less dangerous than it seemed at first, which was to break, by sparing blows of the hammer, the stone and bone at the same time, and to carefully recover those fragments that had been detached. The number of blows thus became much less, because the blows that break the stone shake it much less than those that are without result. The essential thing was, in recovering each fragment of bone, to not mix together those which were from different bony elements, but to put all those that belonged to each of these elements into the small labeled and numbered cardboard boxes. In acting thus, I was certain of success; but I am persuaded that if one had seen me breaking so curious an object, I could have in turn been accused of vandalism. And everywhere the pieces thus broken

{18} very clearly preserve the reciprocal configuration of their fractures, which are easy to find again and reconnect: only insignificant bits are lost; there are few fumblings to fear in the rebuilding, because the fragments of each bone are reassembled in the particular cases; I believe to have proved that the restored pieces, with the cares indicated above, are much more solid and durable than they would have been without this; in obtaining the bones thus isolated, they can be studied under all their aspects. I add finally, as a convincing example, the results that I have obtained on the objects I disengaged: I used very little time, hardly a week; while the fragments that were furnished to me by the workmen, mixed, confused, and partly lost, cost me nearly two months of unyielding work, and still I have been able to reunite several pieces only imperfectly. This method should be put to use in disengaging fossils from the Caen limestone, or others presenting a similar state of preservation, in the following cases: first, when they are easily detached and are at the same time very fragile; second, when the stone is of a strongly unequal durability or is fissured; 3rd, when the bones do not remain in their natural relationships and are confused pell-mell; for other rocks and in other circumstances, doubtless it would be necessary to act otherwise. In every case, I would not advise making an apprenticeship on an important element of this genus; one needs to have practiced on elements of little value, it is necessary to gauge the effect of each hammer blow before applying it, to choose the convenient place to break, and to know finally when to use the hands, without which one would make irreparable damages. §. Vth. Conjectures on what the habits of Poekilopleuron must have been. I do not need to prove that I needed a good provision of zeal and patience in order to accomplish all this fastidious work; I swear that several times the courage nearly abandoned me, above all when I saw my time consumed in useless attempts. I remounted my

{19} perseverance for all the ways that I could invent: and as this occupation required the use of my eyes and hands rather than my head, I gave rein to my imagination during these long hours; I carried myself forward in thought to the time where these bones were penetrated by life, I asked these mute witnesses on the epoch where they had lived, I was told what was now the aspect of that nature, I made myself contemporaneous with the great lizard, I asked it what were the conditions of its existence. Its size was gigantic, its strengths proportional; it had few enemies to fear, but it must have been fearsome to all those that surrounded it. It could hardly move a mass so heavy freely with velocity except in liquid; thus it must have passed a great part of its life in the waters and probably the marine waters, because its bones remained in a limestone that evidently owed its formation to some marine debris. Doubtless it was there that it pursued its prey, because it was necessarily predatory: crocodilians, fishes, and perhaps also large molluscs, ammonites, nautiloids, and belemnites must have been its victims. It must have also have moved well on the ground, because the form of its feet suggests that it could have progressed on firm soil; it would have gone on the shores to rest and sleep in the sun, in the same sun that today illuminates its bones buried for so long a time! What must have been the appearance of our country during these epochs where similar monsters, lizards of thirty feet and weight to match, were living? Because it was not alone; there were others of its species; at the same time there existed many other different ones. The whole of nature and its products of that time were coordinated so that they lived and propagated there. Our peaceful inhabitants of Caen hardly suspect, in the night of the times, that their countryside, now so calm, so flowering, so well cultivated, was the bed of a sea where swarmed monstrous reptiles and such that now no longer exist. Which would tell them what would have risked finding more than the incredible; however nothing is true any longer, and whatever one could say or allege, the paleontological proofs are unchallengeable. And these monsters were not always there; when Poekilopleuron

{20} appeared, they had been preceded by living beings of another nature and aspect. From whence came the first of this race? Is that whose bones we have found the first of its species left by the hands of the Creator? Or did it owe its life to similar parents? An impenetrable mystery. I know that it lived, I have proved it, and that is all. Simultaneous or successive creation, the changing or perfection of species by the influence of time, habits or climates, have always been irresolvable problems for human reason. No analogy passes under our eyes; we see the individuals succeed themselves by reproduction; we conceive the possibility of the annihilation of species; but their arrival on the earth…this is there where it is necessary to cease! §. VIth. Locality of the bones and geological characters of the terrain that enclosed them. We quit these receding epochs and come again to the present time; first we examine the locality of the great saurian. The bones were situated at a depth of 25 to 30 feet and contained in those strata that the workmen name the wide bank(1). I think that here I must recall that the Caen limestone, reported by the Normandy geologists as the inferior stage of the Jurassic limestone, and which according to the opinion of Mr. Hérault seemed must be placed between the Inferior Oolite and the Polyps Limestone (1) This is in the same bank where some bones of Teleosaurus were found fifteen years ago, consisting of a certain number of scales forming the anterior part of the plastron, several dorsal scales, a scapula, a coracoid, a humerus, a cervical vertebra, and several ribs. These pieces were acquired by Lamoroux, and they are now in the village museum. Up until now, these remains of Teleosaurus and those of the great saurian subject of this memoir, are the only objects of this nature from the quarries of La Maladrerie; the numerous remains of Teleosaurus and other saurians that ornament the collections of Caen were recovered in the quarries of the village of Allemagne, removed three-quarters of a mile from La Maladrerie and separated by the Orne valley; several others were furnished by the (Forest Marble?), differs much by its aspect, its tissue, and all its mineralogical characters from other

{21} limestones belonging to the same Jurassic stage. It greatly resembles the coarse limestone of the environs of Paris in its grain, color, and consistency, to the point that it would be nearly impossible to distinguish two specimens from these two limestones deprived of fossils; one can take an idea of one from the other; it is however very certain that these two rocks have no geological and paleontological connection between them. The Caen limestone occupies a fairly large extent; nearly everywhere it is situated immediately under the vegetated earth. In several points it is covered by the upper banks of the Polyps Limestone, without knowing positively how it behaved relative to the inferior layers of this latter limestone, that is to say, whether it is distinct or confused with them. As for the rocks on which it rests, Mr. Hérault indicates a locality at the summit of the Notre-Dame-d’Esquai butte where it is situated immediately on the Inferior Oolite(1). Of the numerous quarries where it is exploited, none reaches its inferior limit and shows bare the rock on which it rests. The quarries examined for this subject assure that a bank of fairly durable grayish marl exists below the Caen limestone, succeeded by a bank of sandstone of the same color, and below the layer of water. Several times I saw in effect some debris from these banks brought back by the borer used to reached the layer, when the pits are excavated to traverse the series of banks composing the Caen limestone; unfortunately these debris brought back by the borer presented no fossils to me. (See Le tableau des terrains du département du Calvados, by Mr. Hérault, p. 121-126, and La topographie géognostique du même dépt., by Mr. Caumont, p. 205 and following.) It is without doubt true that most of the members of the inferior layer of the Jurassic formation, considered together, belonged to the same epoch; but it would be well to desire that the delimiting of all these limestones, either different in aspect or singularly divided as

{22} to the most abundant number and species of their fossils, would be made with care and detail, as a monograph of the locality. Undoubtedly one will either establish a constant distinction of these limestones by their mineralogical aspect according to their relative superpositions, or report their passage and fusion of one into the others. quarries of Quilly, Aubigny, and Vaucelles, near Caen; all are established in a limestone of the same aspect and quality. §. VIIth. Physical state of the bones. The state of preservation of the bones of my great reptile, similar to the rest of all the bony elements found in the Caen limestone, is remarkable and at the same time extraordinary, if one considers that they come from a rock that is very permeable to dissolving agents, to the point that most of the fossil shells, which very certainly were contained in the limestone, have disappeared, and that the small number found there still is strongly altered and changed into rock. I have already made known that the bones adhering a little to the entombing stone, except in the points where the roughness and the regions occupied by the spongy tissue are found. A very thin, nearly powdery, bed covering the surface of the bone, but of a paler color, could be the cause of this lack of adherence; it often presents small roses of black dendrites, and it is removed easily by scratching with a knife: one remarks that the dendrites penetrate its thickness and are still marked on the surface of the scratched bone; all the internal cavities—the medullary cavity, the spongiosities, the vascular canals—are empty as in a dried bone, only these internal surfaces have a more pronounced rusty taint than everywhere else. The bony tissue seems to have not altered in its intimate structure; on several long bones, such as the ribs, femur, etc., the compact substance is removed easily by layers of which the most exterior are the thinnest. Their color is in general a fairly clear rusty yellow when they are dry, much darker when they are humid, as when one recovers them from the stone that has not yet lost its water from the quarry

{23} and contains much of it. These fossil bones have nearly the consistency and aspect of recent bone (except the color and weight) that for a long time had been submitted to the action of fire; but it was not necessary to conclude that they had been heated in place by the action of several subterranean fires; nothing in the localities where the Caen limestone is found indicates the mediate or immediate action of a similar agent. §. VIIIth. Chemical composition of the bones. The remarkable state of preservation of the tissue of these bones, at least as to its (1) At the village of Mai, this limestone might rest immediately on this bank belonging to the Upper Lias called rock. To the truth I have not been able to see the point of contact, but within ten steps of the small quarries of the Caen limestone, exploited on the buttes, the rock is visible at their foot. appearance, excites in me the desire to know up to which point the chemical composition responded to the apparent organic state. I found phosphate and carbonate of limestone there, small quantities of animal material in a particular state, and iron oxide and fluorate of limestone(1)

{24}. §. IXth. Remarks on the physical and chemical state of the bones. If anything must be surprising, it is to meet, in a similar rock, a similar state of preservation for a material that was organic. This state of preservation seemed rather to belong to the fossils contained in the alluvial, or tertiary, terrains or also in several of these ancient terrains so impermeable to all agents that the fossils there remained in nearly the same state as when they were buried; as one sees for several coal-bearing terrains where the leaves of ferns were preserved including their flexibility. But, on the contrary, the rock that forms the Caen limestone is one of the most easily penetrable, one which must experience the most changes in its appearance and mineralogical tissue, and in which the majority of fossil shells were destroyed or strongly altered. The bones of my fossil and all those that I know from the same rock constantly presented (1) I was not content with a qualitative analysis; although I had only fairly imperfect balances at my disposition, with the endorsement of other instruments, and though I was only an unskillful chemist, I tried a quantitative analysis. Preserving, with reason, doubts on the exactness of my results, I communicated to Mr. Girardin of Rouen, whose obligingness was known to me, and whose skill in the delicate researches of chemistry is universally appreciated; I communicated my results to Mr. Girardin, the exposure of the procedures that I had used, and several remains of bones on which I had worked, with my request that he speak frankly what he thought. His response confirmed my doubts: the procedure that I had used was not susceptible to much precision, and the great quantity of limestone carbonate that I noted (44 percent) seemed to him to depend on an evident error, “Because,” he said in his response, “it is not believable that a great amount of salt had formed during the fossilization; and the greatest quantity that had yet been noted in the fossil bones does not exceed 16 percent.” Without wanting to defend my analysis in any manner, I was able to find to oppose the opinion of Mr. Girardin that my fossil bones, which had lost the greatest part of their animal matter, nevertheless had a specific weight of 2.01; while the dried bones of the crocodile (nonfossil) only weighed 1.80; that in the limestone beds, the bodies of fossil organisms underwent notable changes (I give proofs in the following parts of my memoir); that a certain quantity of limestone carbonate was able to infiltrate and be deposited in the intimate tissue of the bones, because they were placed in the middle of a rock where water of the quarry filters and transports not only this salt, but many other mineral materials, whose dissolution, deposition, and also subsequent disappearance, are much more difficult to admit and above all to explain, although they are very real. But that which stops all objection is that Mr. Girardin, in an essay he wrote on the bones that I sent him, found there only 9.92% limestone carbonate. Thus I suppress my quantitative analysis, and give very cordial thanks to Mr. Girardin for the frankness that he agreed to place with me. their internal cavities and the cellulosities of the entirely empty spongy substance(1). I am convinced that it was not always so; that during the epoch of their sojourn in the rock, the internal cavities and the spongiosities were filled with spathic limestone or some other mineral substances(2); that by the progress of time and the action of the water that continually penetrates and traverses the rock and the enclosed bodies, this spathic limestone or other mineral materials had disappeared. Doubtless one will find this opinion very hazardous. I will not develop here all the reasons that lead me to adopt it, which would involve me much too far; I will only observe that it is nearly impossible to believe that the internal cavities of the bone were not covered and filled by crystalline materials, as seen in the interior

{25} of well-closed shells and in the small voids existing at the heart of the majority of rocks: fossil bones that are found in less permeable ancient rocks are always filled with spathic material. I would be content to relate a fact of petrifaction that is offered often enough in the Caen limestone, a fact curious in itself that proves in an unchallengeable manner the transformations, substitutions, changes, etc., that the mineral substances experienced in this rock. It has already been indicated, although very incompletely, by Mr. Le Neuf of Neuville, in a memoir that makes part of the first volume published by the Société Linnéenne de Normandie, p. 62 and 63(1), and reproduced, according to him, by Mr. Hérault (Tableau des terr. du Cal., p. 23) and by Mr. de Caumont (Topog. géogn. du Calvados, p. 206). §. Xth. Remarks on the changes experienced during fossilization by the organic debris furnished by the Caen limestone, notably some great ammonites. This fact is furnished by the state of petrifaction of some ammonites. (1) I exclude from them a small crocodilian coming from the quarries of Aubigny, near Falaise, whose spongiosities are filled with spathic limestone. At the same time it is wise to note that the stone from Aubigny is much more durable than the other varieties of Caen limestone. (2) In the following pages I will speak of a portion of bone from my great reptile whose interior is filled with spathic barite sulfate. (1) This fact is not particular to the quarries of La Maladrerie, as the author indicated: I saw it in the pieces from the villages of Allemagne and Venoix; it is very probable that it is noted in all the localities where the Caen limestone is exploited. Mr. Le Neuf of Neuville said that the ammonites, at whose center quartz is found, are situated in the fissure of stratification that separates the wide bank from the bottom bank; that is too exclusive; similar ammonites, with their quartz alveoli, are also found in the thickness of the banks; in truth I cannot say whether, in this case, those that I have seen belong to the wide bank or to another; the essential thing is to remark here that there is no necessary relationship between them and the fissures of stratification. Those of great dimensions (1 to 2 feet in diameter) are fairly frequent in the Caen limestone; the workmen name them plards. There are probably several species; the most common could be related, I believe, to Am. giganteus Sow. They are in general very poorly preserved, the test is nearly always destroyed, and the interior mold covered by a great number of small irregular plates of a beautiful white, nearly friable, formed of quartz or chalcedony in a very advanced state of alteration; ordinarily there remains only the last turn

{26} and a part of the next-to-last of the ammonite, those of the center have disappeared and have left only slight traces of their presence on the stone. But one often finds there, adherent to the stone, the remains of the siphon of the vanished turns, now end-to-end and forming a curve, (pl. I, fig. 1. a. a.) now in disorder (b. b., etc.); they are formed by a very thin, corn-colored bed having an interior filled of calcareous spath; these nearly gigantic ammonites had a very straight siphon. In other rarer cases, and to which I wish to pay particular attention, the central turns have equally disappeared; but one finds a mass of flattened quartz occupying part of their place, pierced by a prismatic figure in all directions of the cavities, in which it is evident that the crystals were contained; the quartz must have been molded on those and preserved their imprint after they disappeared (fig. 2). This quartz is of a slightly milky tint, its fresh break is vitreous, and consequently it belonged to the variety named hyaline quartz; but when the breaks are old, they have a dull and waxy appearance that made this quartz be taken for chalcedony. The name of chalcedonious quartz, given to it by Mr. Le Neuf of Neuville, is very well founded; in effect this material seems to be a connection between these two varieties of aspects that show the silica; it often sticks in the debris of the siphon. The prismatic cavities are very drawn together; although directed in several directions, their summits in general look toward the center of the mass; one sees that these cavities contained some crystal groups whose bases or points of origin were outside, that is to say, on the stone in the interval where it was molded on the central turns of the ammonite. In the spots where the prismatic cavities left a certain space between them, the quartz that filled it ordinarily offers, in the thickest point, a small geode adorned with summits of crystals belonging to the bisaltern variety. I possess some specimens showing the primitive form of quartz, that is to say the rhomboid that is particular to it; the summits of these crystals have

{27} up to line [= mm] on a side; they are sometimes covered by a very white, very fine powder that is removed easily with a steel point and leaves the surface very clear and brilliant. It is believed that the prismatic cavities contained some crystals of strontium sulfate; in effect they seem to be molded on some forms entirely similar to those of the crystal figured in the mineralogical atlas of Haüy, pl. 44, fig. 86, under the name pointed strontium sulfate. To assure me, I filled several of these cavities with Darcet’s mixture; I was careful that the quartz mold, full of mixture, rested for a certain time in boiling water and that the entirety cooled very slowly. The goniometer applied on the faces M M and o o (pl. I, fig. 3) indicated the angles of barite sulfate and not of strontium: in effect I obtained 101° for the inclination of faces M M, and 105° for that of faces o o; I molded four crystals, and all gave me the same value of angles within some few minutes. Supposing that the cavities had been occupied by strontium, I was not able to be misled even roughly on the opening of the angles; a similar degree but for a few minutes; but 3 degrees at least on faces M M, and three more for faces o o, the thing is not presumable. One can only say that the mixture, by its dilation, was able to make varied angles at this point; I left it to cool slowly in the quartz cavities, and I was only able to remove it by breaking them; the prismatic cavities could not be made ready by a similar variation of forms. Thus no doubt remains that the mineral substance on which the quartz was molded was barite sulfate. The variety of form that the barite has taken in this case was what should be designated by the name pointed following the method of Haüy: the figure of this variety represented in this author’s mineralogical atlas (pl. 34, fig. 14) does not seem, at first aspect, to resemble our vanished crystals; in effect the crystal figured by Haüy is in table, because of the great development of faces P P, whereas the same faces are very straight in our prisms (pl. I, fig. 3); the supposition that our crystals belonged to strontium is perhaps due to this dissimilarity

{28}; but as the laws of diminution are the same for these two forms contained one in the other, the sole value of the angles determines here the difference of the substances. We now examine the diverse states through which the ammonites and accompanying mineral materials must have passed, during the long series of centuries of their sojourn in the stone. 1st. Deposition of the shell with its primitive or marine test, and formation of the banks by silty or sandy deposition. 2nd. Destruction of the marine test and its replacement by a spathic test, at the same time that the cavities are covered or filled with calcareous spath. 3rd. Destruction of the spathic test and calcareous crystals covering or filling the cavities. 4th. Formation of the crystals of barite sulfate. 5th. Deposition of quartz material on the surface of these crystals. 6th. Disappearance of the barite sulfate, without alteration of the quartz. I can add a seventh modification of which I possess several examples: this is the new deposition of calcareous crystals in the prismatic cavities of quartz, a pseudomorphosis of the carbonate limestone into pointed barite sulfate; and, so as to leave no doubt on the origin of this assumed form, several of the prismatic cavities are only partially filled; one sees, in the voids, the real form of the carbonate limestone that is found, in this case, to be the dodecahedron of scalene triangles called metastatic. Without pretending that all these modifications were succeeded with the precision indicated here, they were nevertheless successive. Necessarily these changes, in the nature and appearance of the fossils, should be principally caused by a dissolving and depositional agent, which had penetrated the stone and was found charged now with one material, now with another: this agent could only be water. I have already remarked on how permeable is Caen limestone, and the great quantity of quarry water it contains habitually. According to these remarks on the nature of this limestone and the changes experienced by some ammonites captured here for example, changes

{29} that appear to have been made on more or less all the materials that it enclosed, organic or not, it is clear that the bones could not have been substrates, and that it is impossible that their internal cavities remained void. They were at first filled with water, and crystalline deposits were made there, limestones or others, as instead in the majority of other rocks enclosing the bones; but we remark that the crystalline deposits were redissolved without altering bony walls. This last circumstance is truly very unique: of bodies so little homogeneous and so permeable that the bones remained intact and retained the most beautiful preservation up to their smaller details, while some crystalline substances, with much more compact tissue, completely disappeared. It is not thus of shells; they are in general strongly altered and hardly recognizable. Those with leafy or fibrous marine test, such as oysters, terebratulates, clams, belemnites, mussels, gervillies, etc., that ordinarily persist with their marine test in the majority of rocks, persist also with this structure in the Caen limestone. With regard to the others, a more or less thick bed of calcareous spath indicates their presence; they are very rare in the majority of banks; it is only in some localities(1) and in certain points of the banks(2) that they are found in fairly great abundance; then the rock presents more durability and less homogeneity that where shells are not seen. It is unquestionable, for me, that during the epoch where the Caen limestone was deposited, this rock enclosed infinitely more shells than now; they were dissolved, replaced at first by calcareous spath, and this carried away in the end, totally or in part, under the influence of the previously-indicated causes. I will further remark that I always found more traces of shells in the vicinity of the bones than anywhere else. They were rarely there in the spathic state, but rather in the mold and imprint, the interval being void; I except the shells with leafy or fibrous structure, which preserve their marine test. I do not pretend to explain the good preservation of the bones in a

{30} rock that seems to consume its other fossils: but it seems important to note there the persistence of some shells with laminated or fibrous marine tests; because the test of these molluscs contains, all things considered, more animal material than those of the molluscs with porcelain tests, which disappear entirely, and which a spathic material replaces in most cases. It is further noted that the bones are generally very well preserved in all the rocks, and that the quantity of animal material that they enclosed is greater than that contained in the tests of molluscs with fibrous or laminated shells. Does this animal material, united through life processes in certain proportions with calcareous salts, play an important role here? Did it have an advantage against certain tendencies toward active chemical reactions in the heart of the rocks during the periods of fossilization and petrifaction? I think it did; but I could only apply this opinion in lieu of the observation of the fact itself. Although the preceding remarks were, for me, the expression of verified facts, I greatly fear that they are not found more unbelievable. Perhaps the continual changes that operated in the interior of the rocks had not been observed and studied enough; they were for me the subject of subsequent studies, and I had collected many facts on this subject that I will probably not publish; I feared that they would either be regarded as deserving of little interest or as erroneous. For my great saurian, I hazarded some of these remarks made on the Caen limestone; I dare to hope that if they did not obtain the assent of paleontologists, they would, having condemned them, have cause to examine anew the phenomena of fossilization in homogeneous permeable (1) At Aubigny. (2) At Quilly, on the surface of certain banks and elsewhere. limestones. §. XIth. Portion of the bone of Poekilopleuron enclosed in barite sulfate. I announced in a note (page 56) that, among the bony elements of my great lizard, one was found whose spongy tissue was filled with spathic material. This portion of bone is too incomplete for its place in the skeleton to be assigned with certainty; it is perhaps the head or the bulging portion of some flat bone of the shoulder

{31} or pelvis. I give the figure, pl. V, fig. 18- 19. It is entirely spongy, hardly if any compact tissue it is found at its surface; it is not filled everywhere with spathic material, and in some points the cellules are empty. This piece of bone comes from the block transported to Mouen, and was found amidst the debris felled by my mason; except on the side of the fracture, it was surrounded by a fairly great mass of stone whose grayish color and dried tissue, for 3 to 4 inches around the bone, contrasted with the color of the rest of the mass, which—as well as the stone in general—is of a fairly good white color, slightly yellowish washed; this grayish color formed a sort of halo around the bone, whose nuance weakened and ended by melting into that of the stone. The fragment of spathic-filled bone was of a remarkable weight; the gray portion of the matrix was also heavier than the rest of the stone; I suspected the presence of barite, and analysis verified this suspicion. I found, except error, 30% sulfate of barite in the portion of the bone; a little less, 25%, was in the grayish part of the stone that enclosed it. I could not discern any trace of barite either in the other pieces of limestone surrounding the bone of my great saurian, or in those which envelop the bones of Teleosaurus, or finally in the other randomly-selected pieces of the same limestone without fossils. I found the specific weight of the Caen limestone to be 2.63, and that of the grayish baritiferous limestone to be 3.07. This was the first time that I had found barite sulfate in nature in the Caen limestone. It must not have been rare in geological epochs before the present, because traces of its sojourn are found in the prismatic cavities of quartz described in the preceding paragraph. It must have been for the Caen limestone, relative to barite sulfate, as it is now for the Valognes limestone(1), whose fossils sometimes contain barite crystals: I removed of an asteroid fossil from this limestone, of beautiful enough crystals of the variety named by Haüy anisotic. (1) See the geognostic topography by Mr. de Caumont, p. 253.

{32} §. XIIth. Pathological cases observed in several bones of Poekilopleuron. The bones of my fossil presented two pathological cases to me. The most remarkable exists on one of the chevrons: it is fused to the centrum of the vertebra by its left branch, which offers at the same time an exostosis of very notable volume (pl. II, fig. 1 and 3, b b). The other case, less apparent but not less real, is instead on one of the pedal phalanges (pl. VIII, fig. 21, a. b. c.). This was a decay with osteo-sarcomatic growths; in the place of the phalangeal compact tissue is found a very fine and very fragile cellulosity, with unequal surface, corroded at some points, exuberant in others, briefly having the greatest resemblance with the alteration that constitutes decay in the bones of man and animals. The great fragility of this element did not permit me to remove it from the stone without breaking several of the growths that it showed, but the alteration is very easy to report when this phalanx is compared to others whose tissue was healthy; the posterior articular surface is nearly entire, the anterior is missing; perhaps it was already destroyed before the death of the animal. And so that one did not believe that this was due to the effects of fossilization, there was nothing to mistake; in seeing the element in nature, it is not possible to deny that it had not been altered during the life of the animal. Thus now, if one could doubt, since the times of the existence of these ancient inhabitants of the earth, the laws of organization and all their consequences, that is to say up to the alterations to which they were susceptible, were those which are of our own days: the inflammations, organic lesions, and pain was also the procession of life. In the series of ages, the forms of the productions of nature, their varied generic and specific types, this fact is incontestable; that these differences were the result of creations taking the place of other creations, or that they depend on successive modifications occurring in primitive types, is little important here; but the profound, intimate laws that preside over the fixtures of the organized material and the ruling of this state, were not varied.

{33} §. XIIIth. Small rounded pebbles, tooth of Cestracion and altered bony fragments, found among the ribs of Poekilopleuron. In exploiting the Mouen block (see p. 43, 44), the stone was split according to the direction where the fragments of four to five large ribs were found imbedded that were thus laid bare in an extent of around one square foot; they were not at all parallel, but were crossed in several directions; they were much more fragile in this extent than in the rest of their length; the tone did not have its ordinary consistency there, and at some points it could be nearly crushed under the fingers; it was strewn with small irregular cavities, covered by a sort of brownishviolet powder; some contained small, white, irregularly-outlined plates formed of siliceous material in a nearly friable state of opal. This particular state of the stone, limited to the interval expressed above, is extended to a depth of around two inche