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mon chamber into which the intestinal, urinary, and generative canals discharge in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and many fishes.

Cnemial crest, a crestlike prominence on the proximal end of the tibia of birds and some reptiles.

Pertaining to a bone of the shoulder girdle in most birds, reptiles, and amphibians, which is reduced to a process of the scapula in most mammals.

other matters. In most mammals the red corpuscles are circular, but in the camels, birds, reptiles, and the lower vertebrates generally, they are oval, and sometimes more or less spherical in form. In Amphioxus, and most invertebrates, the blood corpuscles are all white or colorless. -- White blood corpuscles (Physiol…

One who, or that which, crawls; a creeper; a reptile.

To move along the ground, or on any other surface, on the belly, as a worm or reptile; to move as a child on the hands and knees; to crawl. Ye that walk The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep. Milton.

by creeping slowly; in the manner of a reptile; insidiously; cunningly. How slily and creepingly did he address himself to our first parents. South.

A creeping creature; a reptile. [Obs.] There is one creeping beast, or long creeple (as the name is in Devonshire), that hath a rattle at his tail that doth discover his age. Morton (1632).

A contemptible or vicious critic. The rancorous and reptile crew of poeticules, who decompose into criticasters. Swinburne.

A large reptile of the genus Crocodilus, of several species. They grow to the length of sixteen or eighteen feet, and inhabit the large rivers of Africa, Asia, and America. The eggs, laid in the sand, are hatched by the sun's heat. The best known species is that of the Nile (C. vulgaris, or C. Niloticus). The Florida c…

An order of reptiles including the crocodiles, gavials, alligators, and many extinct kinds.

Having a hoodlike crest on the head, as certain birds, mammals, and reptiles.

To reach the highest point, as of rank, size, power, numbers, etc. The reptile race culminated in the secondary era. Dana. The house of Burgundy was rapidly culminating. Motley.

One of a group of extinct reptiles having the jaws armed with a horny beak, as in turtles, and in the genus Dicynodon, supporting also a pair of powerful tusks. Their remains are found in triassic strata of South Africa and India.

An order of extinct mesozoic reptiles, mostly of large size (whence the name). Notwithstanding their size, they present birdlike characters in the skeleton, esp. in the pelvis and hind limbs. Some walked on their three-toed hind feet, thus producing the large "bird tracks," so-called, of mesozoic sandstones; others wer…

us). It belongs the subclass Monotremata and is remarkable for laying eggs like a bird or reptile; -- called also duckbill, platypus, mallangong, mullingong, tambreet, and water mole. -- To make ducks and drakes, to throw a flat stone obliquely, so as to make it rebound repeatedly from the surface of the water, raisin…

An extinct, long-necked, marine, cretaceous reptile from Kansas, allied to Plesiosaurus.

An extinct group of marine reptiles, embracing both the Ichthyosauria and the Plesiosauria, now regarded as distinct orders.

An extinct marine reptile from the coal measures of Nova Scotia; -- so named because supposed to be of the earliest known reptiles.

ng hair, feathers, nails, horns, scales, etc.,as well as the armor of armadillos and many reptiles, and the shells or hardened integument of numerous invertebrates; external skeleton; dermoskeleton.