Abstract
IT is usually stated in text-books that among living reptiles only the Crocodilia and Hatteria are furnished with abdominal ribs or parasternum: that is, of course, in the condition of thin pieces of bone lying between the ventral muscles and underlying the true ribs, for no one doubts that the plastron of the Chelonia is the same structure exaggerated. There has been some little confusion between the abdominal ribs and the ventral moieties of the true ribs in Lacertilia, which is cleared up by Dr. Gadow in his contribution to the “Cambridge Natural History.” Dr. Gadow correctly observes of the geckos that they possess very, long and slender post-thoracic ribs, “which meet each other, in the middle line, in this case bearing an extra-ordinary resemblance to the so-called ‘abdominal ribs’ of other Reptiles.” The statements as to “abdominal ribs” made by M. Boulenger in his catalogue of the lizards in the British Museum appear to me to refer to true ribs. Of the Scincidæ, he remarks that ossified abdominal ribs are absent.” Curiously enough, it is precisely in this group that I find a parasternum. In Tiliqua scincoides the ventral musculature is divided by the usual tendinous septa into successive “myotomes,” the tendinous intervals being distinctly ossified; there are several pairs of these bonelets which seem to be exactly like those of Hatteria, with which I have compared them. That they are not the ventral moieties of the true ribs is shown by the fact that they overlap the latter, the two series of structures lying at a different plane in the musculature. I intend to make a more detailed communication to the Zoological Society upon this subject immediately.
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BEDDARD, F. “Abdominal Ribs” in Lacertilia. Nature 70, 6 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/070006b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/070006b0
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