In the year 1865 portions of the upper and lower jaws of a large extinct fish that had been found imbedded in the Globigerina Limestone of Malta were submitted by Dr. Leith Adams to Professor Owen for identification. Adams had considered them as being the remains of a crocodilian; but in a paper that appeared in the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE for April, 1865, Owen pronounced them to be the remains of a large extinct fish that belonged to “the cycloid order, and having sauroid dentition,” and he proposed that “this fine addition to Miocene Tertiary fishes” should be known by the name of Stereodon Melitensis.

A portion of the bony skeleton of a fish of the same species was also discovered in the same locality; but as it was not sent with the other specimens, it has been neither figured nor described.