Books in Cambridge Library Collection - Monographs of the Palaeontographical Society series

Discoveries of fossil reptiles in the sea cliffs of south-western England helped to consolidate ideas of 'deep time' and extinction by revealing ancient worlds whose unfamiliar and bizarre inhabitants had no living counterparts. Many of these fossils were from the Lower and Upper Lias Groups, suites of rocks laid down in the shallow seas that covered much of southern England during the Early Jurassic period (around 201-174 million years ago). Sir Richard Owen (1804-92) was one of several anatomists who provided extensive descriptions of these animals. His monograph on the Liassic Reptilia (published in three parts in 1861-81) includes the first, and so far only, detailed description of the early armoured dinosaur Scelidosaurus (the first dinosaur known from an almost complete skeleton), an important account of Dimorphodon (the first flying reptile named from the United Kingdom), and critical information on two marine reptile groups, the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs.

Henry Woodward (1832-1921) intended this monograph, originally published as two parts in 1883-4, to be the first of a series of supplements aimed at completing Salter's unfinished work on British trilobites. In the event, no others were published. As the first monographic treatment of Carboniferous trilobites from Britain and Ireland, it has remained a standard work. Thirty-one species distributed among four genera are described, including the type species of the well-known Phillipsia, Griffithides and Brachymetopus. The specimens are faithfully reproduced in a series of fine illustrations. The monograph concludes with three short appendices: the nature of pores on the trilobite headshield; a new Carboniferous trilobite from Ohio; and a letter from Agassiz on possible affinities between trilobites and a marine isopod. Woodward described further new species of Carboniferous trilobites in a series of papers published between 1884 and 1906, which acted as supplements to his monograph.