Abstract
THE twenty-fourth annual congress of the South Eastern Union of Scientific Societies was held in the Guildhall, London, on June 11–14, under the presidency of Dr. A. Smith Woodward. In his opening address the president referred especially to the pioneer work of Mantell in discovering the fossil giant reptiles in the Sussex Weald, and showed how the later finds in Belgium and North America had partly modified, partly extended, his conclusions. He mentioned that Mr. Reginald W. Hooley had recently found in the southern cliffs of the Isle of Wight a skeleton of an iguanodon which rivalled those from Bernissart, Belgium, in perfection. The specimen showed a finely granulated skin. The sudden ending of the “geological age of reptiles,” as Mantell named it, still awaited explanation, for the distribution of the giant reptiles was almost world-wide at the time. The mamnials found the land practically vacant for occupation, and none of them attained a larger size than a tapir until the Middle Eocene period.
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The South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies . Nature 103, 314 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/103314a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/103314a0