(One half nat. size.)]
There were no parts of the animal more remarkable than its jaws. The
under jaws,—for the nether maxillary consisted, in this fish, as in
the placoid fishes, and in the quadrupeds generally, of two pieces
joined in the middle,—were, like those of the _Holoptychius_, boxes
of bone, which enclosed central masses of cartilage. The outer and
under sides were thickly covered with the characteristic star-like
tubercles; and along the upper margin or lip there ran a thickly-set row
of small broadly-based teeth, planted as directly on the edge of the
exterior plate as iron spikes on the upper edge of a gate (fig. 30.)
Mr. Parkinson expresses some wonder, in his work on fossils, that, in
a fine ichthyolite in the British Museum, not only the _teeth_ should
have been preserved, but also the _lips_; but we now know enough of
the construction of the ancient Ganoids to cease wondering. The _lips_
were formed of as solid bone as the teeth themselves, and had as fair a
chance of being preserved entire; just as the metallic rim of a _cogged_
wheel has as fair a chance of being preserved as the metallic cogs that
project from it. Immediately behind the front row,—in which the teeth
present the ordinary ichthyic appearance,—there ran a thinly-set row of
huge _reptile_ teeth, based on an interior platform of bone, which formed
the top of the cartilage-enclosing box composing the jaw. These were at
once bent outwards and twisted laterally, somewhat like nails that have
been drawn out of wood by the claw of a carpenter’s hammer, and bent
awry with the wrench, (fig. 31.) They were furrowed longitudinally from
point to base by minute thickly-set striæ and were furnished laterally,
in most of the specimens though not in all, with two sharp cutting
edges. The reptile had as yet no existence in creation; but we see its
future coming symbolized in the dentition of this ancient Ganoid: it,
as it were, shows us the _crocodile_ lying entrenched behind the fish.
The interior structure of these reptile teeth is very remarkable. In the
longitudinal section we find numerous cancelli, ranged lengthwise along
the outer edges, but much crossed, net-like, within,—greatly more open
towards the base than at the point,—and giving place in the centre to a
hollow space, occasionally traversed by a few slim osseous partitions.
In the transverse section these cancelli are found to radiate from
the open centre towards the circumference, like the spokes of a wheel
from the nave; and each spoke seems as if, like Aaron’s rod, it had
become instinct with vegetative life, and had sprouted into branch and
blossom. Seen in a microscope of limited field, that takes in, as in
the accompanying print, (fig. 32,) not more than a fourth part of the
section, the appearance presented is that of a well-trained wall tree.
And hence the generic name _Dendrodus_, given by Professor Owen to teeth
found detached in the deposits of Moray, when the creatures to which they
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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