Dentition of the palate in Cynognathus / by H.G. Seeley.

  • Harry Govier Seeley
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dentition of the palate in Cynognathus / by H.G. Seeley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [^Extracted from the GEOLOGiciL Magazine, Decade V, Vol. V, No. 533, November, 1908.] On the Dentition of the Palate in the South Afbican Fossil Eeptile Genus Cynognathvs. By Prof. H. G. Seeley, F.K.S., F.G.S., King’s College, London. (PLATE XXIV.) rilHE Cynodont reptilia from the Lower Karroo rocks of South X Africa, characterized hy relatively lai’ge incisors and relatively small, sharp-pointed, molar teeth, were grouped under the type genus Lycosaurm as Lycosauria. The removal of matrix from the palate of JElurosaurus showed that in one member of the group at least the palate carries patches of teeth, each of which has the form of a small blunt flattened cone. From the fact that no Cynodont skull is available in which the mandible is free from the head, the nature of the palatal dentition is imperfectly known. Of the new Cynodont reptilia obtained by myself from the Upper Karroo rocks in 1889, the most complete were species of Cynognathus (Phil. Trans. Royal Soc., B, 1895, p. 59). But these specimens, with relatively large denticulated molar teeth, all have the mandible closed upon the skull, so that the anterior part of the palate is not displayed. In Cynognathus crateronotus (op. cit., fig. 9, p. 83) the palatine bones arch over the palato-nares, but as they extend backward laterally each appears to be twisted over, with a lateral bulge, to make the walls of the palato-nares behind the hard palate. The mandibular symphysis obscures the front of the palate, but it only extends posteriorly as far as the maxillary canines. No teeth were exposed upon the maxillary plates of the palate. The matrix is so intractable and the bones so friable in the figured species C. Berryi that no attempt can be made to expose the palate with the chisel. In this species the extremity of the snout is lost. But the weathered nasal chamber shows a vertical median plate of bone (op. cit., fig. 24, p. 124) which appears to enter into the palate, rising for some distance into the nasal chamber, where it is flanked by thin, curved plates which may represent turbinal bones. It is less than inch wide, separated