Jávorka Sándor - Soós Lajos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 29. (Budapest 1935)
Fejérváry, G. J.: Further contributions to a monograph of the Megalanidae and fossil Varanidae - with notes on recent Varanians
a note of interrogation appended to the suborder name. 50 The name of the Gens was left as problematic throughout, it being substituted by an interrogation mark only. To-day, after our notions of the Platynota have been maturated and more clarified by further work and new evidence, I am up to say more about that question too. Megalania, though very specialized in its osteological characters, the most prominent feature of which consists in the decidedly p a c h y os t o t i c construction of the vertebrae, proves, nevertheless, intimately related to the Varanians, so that we have, indeed, to assign its place within the genetical unit formed by the Suborder Platynota. Now, that we know the upper jaw too. there cannot be any doubt about the correctness of such arrangement. Megalania represents an extinct, Pleistocene side branch of the Platynota stem, characterized by, if one may say so. a .,pathological" penchant in its skeletal evolution, and resulting in a sort of incipient pachyostosis, and a series of other peculiarities, partly dependent on, and, probably, partly responsible for, its phylogenetical and, thus, morphological and systematical, differentiation. It certainly deserves, in systematics, a family rank, but there is no evidence at all to be produced in favour of a suborderly or at least gential separation from the Varanians. In my mind it has to enter the Gens Varanomorpha FÜRBR., though as a separate family, Megalanidae FEJÉRV. In the present osteological discussion that hasty touch upon the systematical position of the form shall suffice to the purpose, for the train we are following in the general treatment of our subject will, in this case too. require a final and conclusive revision of the phylogenetosysiematic results we arrived at by means of considering and reconsidering the results afforded by morphological analysis. So I will have to return, at the end of this paragraph, to this subject. Description of the Darling Downs, vertebra in the Herpetological Collections of the Hung. Nat. Museums's Zoological Department (Mus. Hung. Rept. No. 2778). Habit stout, arcus nearly twice as broad as long, heavy built in its anterior part, comparatively light built m tjie posterior one; ball- large, hemispheric, strongly projecting; shaft (glenoid cavity) of medium depth, broadly and rather deeply sinuate caudad; neural canal very narrow, anterior vault tripartite: spinous process anteropostcriorly pretty broad, rather steep. — Division characteristics pointing to its being an anterior r '" Op. cit. p. 449,
