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The Great Sea-Lizards and Their Allies

"The wonders of geology exercise every faculty of the mind-reason, memory, imagination; and though we cannot put our fossils to the question, it is something to be so aroused as to be made to put the question to one's self." HUGH MILLER.

THE fish-lizards, described in our last chapter, were not the only predaceous monsters that haunted the seas of the great Mesozoic age, or era. We must now say a few words about certain contemporary creatures that shared with them the spoils of those old seas, so teeming with life. And first among these-as being more fully known-come the long-necked sea-lizards, or Plesiosaurs. The Plesiosaurus was first discovered in the Lias rocks of Lyme Regis, in the year 1821. It was christened by the above name, and introduced to the scientific world by the Rev. Mr. Conybeare (afterwards Dean of Llandaff) and Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) de la Beche. They gave it this name in order to distinguish it from the Ichthyosaurus, and to record the fact that it was more nearly allied to the lizard than the latter.¹ Conybeare, with the assistance of De la Beche, first described it in a now-classic paper read before the Geological Society of London, and published in the Transactions of that Society in the year 1 The name is derived from two Greeks words-plesios, near, or allied to, and sauros, a lizard.