On the Association of Dwarf Crocodiles ( Nannosuchus and Theriosuchus pusillus , e.g.) with the Diminutive Mammals of the Purbeck Shales

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Abstract
Agbeeably with an intimation at the close of the Monograph (No. VIII.) “On the Fossil Reptilia of the Wealden and Purbeck Formations,” which appeared in the volume of the Palæontographical Society issued in 1878 (p. 15), I communicated to the Geological Society of London a paper in which ideas suggested by the subjects of that Monograph on certain relations of Mesozoic and Neozoic Crocodilia to their prey were more fully detailed, and an instructive discussion was thereupon raised agreeably with the writer's design. To his assumption that the mammalian prey of Neozoic Crocodiles were non-existent in Mesozoic times, an experienced palæontologist objected that such were in existence at those periods, and co-existed with the Teleosaurs and other amphicœlian Crocodiles. It had not occurred to me that the mammalian prey of the Neozoic Crocodiles, which I had in view, and which were exemplified in my mind and meaning by the Tiger, the Buffalo, and similarly large unguiculate and ungulate species, could be represented or suggested by the extinct mammals from the Purbeck and Stonesfield strata, in the restoration of which, and the vindication of their claims to warm-blooded and mammiferous eminence, no small proportion of past palæontological work had been submitted by me in former days to the Geological Society.

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