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On account of the hand-shaped marks made by its paws, Owen thinks that it was akin to the frogs; but it was a formidable monster, with head and jaws of a crocodile. Another may have been the Teleosaurus, which resembled our alligators. It was thirty-five feet in length. Then there was the Hylaeosaurus, a monster twenty-five feet in length, with a cuirass of bony plates."

John W. Judd, and he has shown that it is separable into three divisions, the uppermost of which, 150 feet thick, and containing 87 species of mollusca, decidedly belongs to the Atherfield clay and associated strata of Hythe and Folkestone, already described. Fine skeletons of reptiles of the genera Pliosaurus and Teleosaurus have been obtained from this clay.

Then, by slow degrees, the mountains of Brazil, with their mines of glittering gems, appeared above the surface of the waters, amid which huge reptile-like whales, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and cetiosaurs buffeted the billows, and vast saurians, lizards, and alligators, rivalling the elephant in bulk, and twice his length such as the megalosaurus, the iguanodon, and teleosaurus crawled along the slimy shores; while giant birds, with wide-spreading feet, stalked across the newly-formed plains, or flew shrieking, with wings of prodigious expanse skimming the glittering sea, the lords paramount of this lower world.