Publications
On Thecospondylus horneri, a new dinosaur from the Hastings Sand, indicated by the sacrum and the neural canal of the sacral region, by Harry Govier Seeley, published January 1882 in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (vol. 38, issue 1-4, article, pp.457-459) View Online
Abstract:Dr. A. C. Horner, of Tonbridge, has obtained from the quarry at Southborough in the Hastings Sand, and intrusted to me, what I believe to be a unique specimen, so far as this country is concerned, exhibiting a mould of the entire neural cavity of the sacral region of a Dinosaur. But the specimen is nevertheless peculiarly tantalizing, since the quarryman states that it is the only specimen of any kind that he has ever found in the quarry, and enough remains of bony tissue upon the cast to render it certain that the external mould of the sacrum, if not the bony tissue itself, might have been preserved. It its imperfect both anteriorly and posteriorly, but measures exactly 60 centimetres in length. The vertebræ which are complete are five in number; each is 11 centim. long; but there is a small fragment in front which appears to show that there was another vertebra anteriorly (fig. 2, 1), while the fragment of the posterior vertebra (fig. 2, 7) admits of no question. We have thus a sacrum which certainly included six or seven vertebræ, and may have comprised more. The bony tissue is preserved only upon the right side of three consecutive vertebræ. It is a thin film closely adherent to the cast, showing a cancellous structure external to the thin interior layer (fig. 1, b).
On Heterosuchus valdensis, Seeley, a Proc?lian Crocodile from the Hastings Sand of Hastings, by H. G. Seeley, published January 1887 in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (vol. 43, issue 1-4, article, pp.212-215) View Online
Abstract:The specimen in the British Museum, numbered 36555, came there in the second Mantellian collection, which was acquired after Dr. Mantell's death. It is part of a thin ironstone nodule, 10 centim. long and 6 centim. wide, from the Hastings Sand of Hastings, manifestly water-worn, but containing vertebræ which have not hitherto been determined. The nodule (Pl. XII. fig. 7) displays the remains of fully a dozen vertebræ, which extend round the nodule in parts of more than one coil, so arranged as to expose the ventral surface or bodies of the vertebræ, towards the external margin of the concretion. These vertebræ indicate a proc?lian Crocodile of small size; and although the remains are so imperfect, I refer them to a new genus, since their forms are different from those of any Purbeck Crocodiles or other described Crocodilia.