Osteological collection illustrative of modifications of Ornithosauria in the Cambridge Greensand, pp. 28–94.
| Sternum | 28 |
| Coracoid | 32 |
| Scapula | 35 |
| Humerus | 38 |
| Radius and Ulna | 42 |
| Proximal carpal | 48 |
| Distal carpal | 50 |
| Lateral carpal | 51 |
| Metacarpal bone of wing-finger | 53 |
| First phalange of wing-finger | 56 |
| Second phalange of wing-finger | 57 |
| Claw phalange | 59 |
| Os innominatum | 59 |
| Femur | 62 |
| Tibia | 62 |
| Tarso-metatarsus | 63 |
| Atlas and axis | 64 |
| Cervical vertebræ | 65 |
| Dorsal vertebræ | 69 |
| Sacrum | 73 |
| Caudal vertebræ | 75 |
| Bones of the head | 77 |
| Basi-oocipital bone | 78 |
| Back of the cranium | 80 |
| Back of another cranium | 84 |
| Ethmo-sphenoid | 85 |
| Mould of the brain-cavity | 87 |
| ?Vomer | 88 |
| Quadrate bone | 89 |
| ?Pterygoid end of palatine bone | 91 |
| Premaxillary bones | 91 |
| Lower jaw | 91 |
| Teeth | 92 |
| Conclusion | 94 |
| A summing up | 94 |
| Restoration | 103 |
| Speculations on habits and aspect | 104 |
| Notes on German specimens | 106 |
| Classification | 108 |
| Synopsis of species | 112 |
| Appendix | 129 |
| Index | 133 |
| Plates, and explanation of Plates. | Plates |
ERRATA.
| PAGE | LINE | ||
| 4, | 2, | from bottom, for procælian read procœlian. | |
| 7, | 13, | for Ossements read Ossemens. | |
| 8, | last line, paragraph (2), for outermost read innermost. | ||
| 10, | 21, | for Sömmering read Sömmerring. | |
| 11, | 5, | ||
| 11, | 13, | ||
| 14, | note, for Beyerischen read Bayerischen. | ||
| 15, | 5, | for ?zygapophyses read spinous-processes. | |
| 17, | 6, | from bottom, for Herman read Hermann. | |
| 37, | 5, | from bottom, after "spine as" insert "are" | |
| 92, | line above 'the Dentary Bone,' for Pterodactyle read Pterodactyles. | ||
| 97, | 11, | for Günter read Günther. | |
| 99, | 4, | for Ichthyopteria read Ichthyopterygia. | |
| 101, | 11, | from bottom, for procælous read procœlous. | |
| 102, | 15, | for procælous read procœlous. | |
| 111, | 8, | for Sömmering read Sömmerring. |
For epipubic bone read prepubic bone, pp. 61, 102, 109, 110, 111, and pl. 8.
INTRODUCTION
TO THE
OSTEOLOGY OF THE ORNITHOSAURIA FROM THE CAMBRIDGE UPPER GREENSAND.
Materials.
The Cambridge Upper Greensand has yielded to collectors bones which illustrate nearly every part of the skeleton of the animals that are commonly named Pterodactyles. Large collections have been acquired for the Woodwardian Museum. A series of more than 500 bones have been arranged to exemplify the osteology and organization of the Ornithosauria in the area when the Cambridge Greensand was deposited. And this memoir is written to explain briefly some of the structures of the soft and hard parts of those animals which are exhibited or demonstrated by these relics. Another collection of nearly 400 bones has been arranged, which displays in association, as they were found entombed in the old Greensand sea-bed, the remains of the skeletons of thirty-three animals of the Pterodactyle kind. The whole of the remains from this formation hitherto gathered cannot be computed to have pertained to fewer than 150 individuals, which indicate a new sub-class of animals, two new genera and at least twenty-five new species.
The bones were mostly of a paper or card-like thinness, and were originally hollow like the thin bones of birds. In the jaws of other animals, and in the sea, they were easily fractured, so that proximal ends and distal ends and shafts and split bones abound, while perfect bones are almost unknown. Even those bones like the carpals, which almost retain their entirety, invariably show indications of having been rolled on the sea-shore among the nodules of phosphate of lime with which they now occur, in their angular margins being rounded, and in the removal of slender processes. The rock in which these fossils are found is a thin bed of chalky marl which is heavily charged with dark-green grains of Glauconite, and is quarried largely, and entirely dug away to be deprived of the dark-brown nodules of phosphate of lime with which it is stored. In digging and in the subsequent washing, the workmen, stimulated by an ample reward, pick out the fossils as they are discovered. They are separated easily from the matrix of investing marl, so that every aspect of each bone is seen, except for the occasionally adherent oysters and the masses of phosphate of lime, with which material the bones are also filled. Hence these remains afford facilities for the study of the joints such as no other specimens have presented; and from their large size and comparatively great numbers, render easy the labour of the student who seeks to contrast them with the bones of other animals.
The osteological collection has been formed without regard to species or genera, and arranged to exhibit the structure and organization of the tribe of animals. So far as possible each bone, as humerus, femur, &c., has its variations of structures and form contrasted on a single tablet. The series comprises the following bones:
Fore-part of sternum.
Coracoid (perfect).
Scapula (nearly perfect).
Humerus (perfect).
?Radius (proximal end).
Radius (distal end).
?Ulna (proximal end).
Ulna (distal end).
Proximal carpal.
Distal carpal.
Lateral carpal.
Wing-metacarpal (proximal and distal ends).
First phalange (proximal and distal ends).
Second phalange (proximal end).
Metacarpal or metatarsal (distal end).
Claw phalange.
Os innominatum (parts of ilium, ischium, and pubis).
Femur (perfect).
?Tibia (proximal end).
Atlas and axis.
Cervical vertebræ.
Dorsal vertebræ.
Sacrum and sacral vertebræ.
Caudal vertebræ.
Lower jaw (dentary and articular ends).
Premaxillary bones, &c.
Teeth.
Quadrate bone (distal end with quadrato-jugal).
Ethmoid with basi-sphenoid.
Occipital and parietal segments of skulls.
Basi-occipital and basi-temporal.
Cast of brain-cavity.
They are exhibited in Compartments a, b, c of the Table-case of Cabinet J. The letter F in a circle is placed against figured specimens.
History.
The Cambridge Pterodactyles first attain prominence in scientific literature in the year 1859. Professor Owen had figured (plate 32, fig. 6–8) fragments of bones in the Palæontographical Society's Monograph for 1851; the distal end of a large ulna (fig. 6); the shaft of a phalange of the wing-finger, probably the first (fig. 7); and the upper portion of the shaft of a small humerus showing part of the radial crest (fig. 8). Inadvertently the last specimen was referred to the Lower Greensand. But although fragments of humerus of Pterodactyle and vertebræ of Pterodactyloid animals have in the last few years been gathered from the Potton Sands, those deposits were believed to be barren of fossils when Prof. Owen wrote; and all the Pterodactyles yet made known from near Cambridge were collected from the Cambridge Upper Greensand.
Among the earliest successful collectors were Mr. James Carter, the Rev. H. G. Day, St. John's Coll.; Prof. G. D. Liveing, St. John's Coll.; the Rev. T. G. Bonney, St. John's Coll.; and Mr. Lucas Barrett, Trin. Coll.; and the Rev. Prof. Sedgwick, Trin. Coll., on behalf of the Woodwardian Museum. Mr. Day and Mr. Bonney both presented every specimen from their cabinets which could enrich the University collection. And in the last ten years the Woodwardian Museum has acquired, through the skillful collecting of the Messrs Farren, the present materials. The associated sets of bones were formed by William and Robert Farren, who, obtaining the specimens from day to day as they were discovered, were enabled to put together such parts of the skeleton as remained together on the sea-bottom. These collections will hereafter be used for the elucidation of species. They are the only materials which can give the proportions of the Cambridge Ornithosaurians, and the contrast of aspect which distinguished the living animals from those from other rocks.
The other collections of these fossils are those of Mr. William Reed and Mr. J. F. Walker at York, the Museum of Practical Geology, and the British Museum.
The Woodwardian specimens as collected were placed in the hands of Prof. Owen, and were first made known in the Professor's lectures on reptiles and birds delivered at the Museum of Practical Geology in 1858. In that year Prof. Owen communicated to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and printed in their Report, the matter of the memoir which was published with plates by the Palæontographical Society in 1859. In this latter year Prof. Owen communicated to the Royal Society an account of the vertebral column of Pterodactyles. In 1859 Prof. Owen also produced a classification of recent and fossil reptiles at the meeting of the British Association, in which the order Pterosauria appears with new characters—such as the pneumatic structure of most of the bones—drawn from Cambridge specimens. In 1860 Prof. Owen produced another memoir on Pterodactyles, which was published by the Palæontographical Society. A brief account of the tribe appeared about the same time in the Professor's Palæontology.
In these writings are descriptions of the various parts of the vertebral column. Their procœlian centra are described, and the pneumatic foramina are noticed and supposed to have communicated with air-cells. They are compared with birds, and distinguished from birds; but although the order is classed with reptiles no contrast with reptiles is made. Other bones described are a basi-occipital, and a doubtful bone, then thought to be a frontal, but which is more like the neural region of the sacrum.
The sternum is compared with the sternum of the birds Apteryx and Aptenodytes, is stated to be formed, in the main, on the Ornithic type, and to possess distinct synovial articular cavities for the coracoids such as only occur in birds. The inter-coracoid process of the sternum is compared with that of Bats, Birds, and Crocodiles.
The mechanism of the framework of the wings is said to be much more bird-like than bat-like, the anchylosed scapula and coracoid being remarkably similar to those of a bird of flight. The coracoid is shorter and straighter in birds than in Pterodactyles, but no comparisons are made with reptiles.
The humerus is known only by the proximal end. It is said to conform at its proximal end more with the Crocodilian than with the Avian type, but to have the radial crest much more developed than in either Crocodile or Bird. The bone is, however, chiefly compared with birds, and is figured between corresponding bones of a Vulture and a Crocodile. The pneumatic texture is said to be as well marked as in any bird of flight.
Of the carpus it is said, the Pterodactyle, in the complete separation of the metacarpus from the antibrachium by two successive carpals answering to the two rows, adheres more closely to the reptilian type than to that of birds. But the row which was regarded as proximal is the distal row, while the supposed distal row is proximal.
The claw-phalange and distal end of the wing-metacarpal, the mandible, teeth, and jaw are the other bones described, but their comparative osteology is not discussed. In the Professor's account of a fragment of a jaw it is said, "The evidence of the large and obviously pneumatic vacuities now filled with matrix, and the demonstrable thin layer of compact bone forming their outer wall, permit no reasonable doubt as to the Pterosaurian nature of this fossil. All other parts of the flying reptile being in proportion, it must have appeared with outstretched pinions like the soaring Roc of Arabian romance, but with the demoniacal features of the leathern wings with crooked claws, and of the gaping mouth with threatening teeth, superinduced."
When the specimens on which Prof. Owen had founded the foregoing views of the osteology and classification of these animals were at length returned to the Woodwardian Museum, it became a duty of the present writer to arrange and name them. And in a Memoir on Pterodactyles which was communicated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society and read March 7 and May 2 and 16, 1864, a position was claimed for them, distinct from reptiles, as a separate sub-class of Sauropsida, nearly related to birds.
In September of the same year a communication was made to the British Association "On the Pterodactyle as evidence of a new sub-class of vertebrata (Sauromia)," with enlarged drawings of the skull and some of the other bones, in which the conclusions arrived at were that, excepting the teeth, there is little in such parts of the head as are preserved to distinguish the Cambridge Pterodactyles from birds; and that the remainder of the skeleton gives a general support to the inference from the skull.
Papers were communicated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on February 17, 1868, on indications of Mammalian affinities in Pterodactyles in the pelvis and femur, and February 22, 1869, on the bird-like characters of the brain and metatarsus in the Pterodactyls from the Cambridge Greensand. The other references to Cambridge specimens are in a paper "On the literature of English Pterodactyles" in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for Feb. 1865, and in "An epitome of the evidence that Pterodactyles are not reptiles, but a new sub-class of vertebrate animals allied to birds," in the same magazine for May, 1866.
In the meantime Prof. Owen's views have somewhat changed. In the first volume of the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrata (1866), the Pterosauria are classed as the highest group of reptiles, and take rank above the Dinosauria. In the second volume of that work (1866), occurs the following passage:
"Derivatively the class of birds is most closely connected with the Pterosaurian order of cold-blooded air-breathers. In equivalency it is comparable rather with such a group than with the Reptilia in totality, or with the Mammalia."
Organization.
Nearly every writer on Pterodactyles, who has expressed any opinion at all, has formed an estimate of his own of their organization. They have been assigned to almost all possible positions in the vertebrate province, by great anatomists who all had before them very similar materials. An account of these views is given by von Meyer in his monograph of the Pterodactyles of the Lithographic Slate. It will not be necessary to discuss these conclusions here, for the materials from the Lithographic Slate and those from the Cambridge Greensand are so different that no light would be thrown on the organization of the animals by an exposition of any fallacious inferences from German specimens. In England they are classed with Reptilia, chiefly through the influence of the discourse upon them given by Baron Cuvier in his Ossemens Fossiles[A]. It therefore may conduce to a clear view of the subject to quote in Cuvier's words the passages in that memoir which have been supposed to establish their position among reptiles. He says—"Ayant encore porté mon attention sur le petit os cylindrique marqué g (i.e. os quadratum) qui va du crâne à l'articulation des mâchoires, je me crus muni de tout ce qui étoit nécessaire pour classer ostéologiquement notre animal parmi les reptiles." The exact relations of the quadrate bone are not seen in either Cuvier's or Goldfuss' or von Meyer's figures of this Pterodactyle, the P. longirostris; but in von Meyer's figures of P. crassirostris, P. longicollum, and P. Kochi it appears to be a free bone articulated to the squamosal and petrosal region of the skull and with the lower jaw. This is not the case with either Chelonians or Crocodiles, which have the quadrate bone firmly packed in the skull; nor is it paralleled even among those lizards and serpents which have the bone as free; while, on the contrary, it is characteristic of the whole class of birds. The form of the bone is not more Lacertian than Avian, while its direct attachment to the bone of the brain-case finds no parallel among lizards, but is exactly paralleled in all birds.
[A] Tome V. Part a, pp. 358, 383. Edition, 1814.
Cuvier then goes on to say, "Ce n'étoit pas non plus un oiseau, quoiqu'il eût été rapporté aux oiseaux palmipèdes par un grand naturaliste[B]." Which position he supports as follows:—
[B] Blumenbach.
(1) "Un oiseau auroit des côtes plus larges, et munies chacune d'une apophyse récurrente[C]; son metatarse n'auroit formé qu'un seul os, et n'auroit pas été composé d'autanut d'os qu'il a de doigts." These, though they may not be characters which are those of birds, are certainly not eminently reptilian. The elongated form of the tarsals in birds is peculiar, but quite functional, as may be seen among the Penguins, where, when the so-called tarso-metatarsal bone is no longer erect, it becomes much shorter, and is nearly separated into three distinct bones. The cretaceous Pterodactyles appear to have this bone exactly like that of birds.
[C] This shown in other specimens since figured, and in the specimen from Stonesfield in the Oxford Museum.
(2) "Son aile n'auroit eu que trois divisions après l'avantbras, et non pas cinq comme celle-ce." This is a difference, but a difference of detail only, and not a reptilian character. The creatures have wings; and no reptile known, from recent or fossil specimens, has wings. The general plan of the wing, though very unlike, approximates to that of a bird. Most birds have two phalanges in the long finger, though some have three. One Pterodactyle is described as having only two phalanges in the wing-finger, while most of the German specimens appear to have four phalanges. In birds the longest finger appears to be the middle one, while in Pterodactyles it is the innermost one.
(3) "Son bassin auroit eu une toute autre étendue et sa queue osseuse un toute autre forme; elle seroit élargie, et non pas grêle et conique." The pelvis of Pterodactyle is not reptilian, and no living reptile has a pelvis like it. It is not unlike the pelvis of a Monotreme, but the ilium is more Avian. It resembles the pelvis of Dicynodon. And the discovery of a long-tailed bird-like the Archæopteryx shows that the tail is like that of old birds, even if it also presents some analogy in form to that of certain reptiles and mammals.
(4) "Il n'y auroit pas eu de dents au bec; les dents des harles ne tiennent qu'à l'enveloppe cornée, et non à la charpente osseuse." This is not a reptilian character. Among reptiles some tribes have teeth, others want them; and among mammals some animals are without teeth, though they are so characteristic of the class. It is an anomaly that birds should all be toothless. And so, without citing the supposed teeth of Archæopteryx, it may be affirmed that it would be no more remarkable for some birds to have teeth than it is for some mammals and reptiles to be without them.
(5) "Les vertèbres du cou auroient été plus nombreuses. Aucun oiseau n'en a moins de neuf; les palmipèdes, en particulier, en ont depuis douze jusqu'à vingt-trois, et l'on n'en voit ici que six ou tout au plus sept." This is a variation of detail such as, had it occurred among birds, would hardly have been deemed evidence of their affinities. When the variation of the neck-vertebræ ranges from 23 to 9, the further reduction of the number to 7 becomes insignificant, and does not show that the animal was a reptile.
(6) "Au contraire, les vertèbres du dos l'auroient été beau-coup moins. Il semble qu'il y en ait plus de vingt, et les oiseaux en ont de sept à dix, ou tout au plus onze." This modification is obviously the result of smaller development of the pelvic bones from front to back, and hence of the small number of vertebræ in the sacrum. It does not support the reference of Pterodactyles to the class of reptiles.
Speaking of the teeth, it is said, "Elles sont toutes simples, coniques, et à peu près semblables entre elles comme dans les crocodiles, les monitors, et d'autres lézards." The teeth of Pterodactyles are (in the skull) for the most part in the premaxillary bones, in which it is so characteristic for the teeth of animals to, be merely conical and simple. Therefore it would have been difficult to imagine the teeth to have been anything but what they are, whatever the affinities of the Pterodactyle might be.
It is remarked, "La longueur du cou est proportionée à celle de la téte. On y voit cinq vertèbres grandes et prismatiques comme celles des oiseaux à long cou, et une plus petite se montre à chaque extrémité." This adds nothing to the evidence for its reptilian character.
"Ce qui est le plus fait pour étonner, c'est que cette longue téte et ce long cou soient portés sur un si petit corps; les oiseaux seuls offrent de semblable proportions, et sans doute c'est, avec la longueur du grand doigt, ce qui avoit determiné quelques naturalistes à rapporter notre animal à cette classe." Nor is this evidence that the animal was a reptile. And in many minor matters Cuvier is careful to show how their modifications resemble those of birds; and when this is not so, birds are the only animals from which he finds them varying. And the few suggestions which are thrown out respecting their affinities with lizards are upon points which are also common to birds.
Thus what Cuvier did was to distinguish these animals from birds, and incidentally to show that their organization was a modification of that of the Avian class. And the legitimate inference would have been that their systematic place was near the birds, and not that they were reptiles.
But in Germany Cuvier's views on Pterodactyles have by no means been submissively received; and great anatomists, since he wrote, have propounded and defended views as various as those of the anatomists who preceded him, and with no less confidence in the results of their science. In the brief space at my command it would be impossible to do justice to the works of this array of philosophers, and therefore I present in a somewhat condensed version the epitome of their conclusions given by Hermann von Meyer in his Reptilien aus dem Lithographischen Schiefer der Jura. They form a commentary on the casts of Solenhofen Pterodactyles contained in the Woodwardian Museum.
Sömmerring
regarded the Pterodactyle as an unknown kind of bat, and thought that Cuvier was misled by Collini's imperfect description. He believed that he found in them different kinds of teeth as in mammals; and regarded them as differing from bats chiefly in having larger eye-holes, a longer neck, four fingers and four toes, a longer metatarsus, and in having but one elongated finger; and found the closest analogue of the fingers in Pteropus marginatus of Bengal. And although inclined to place the Pterodactyle between Pteropus and Galeopithecus, he suspects from the bird-like characters of the head and feet that its true place is intermediate between mammals and birds.
Oken[D].
[D] Isis, 1818, p. 551.
Oken reasoned carefully so far as his materials went. He dwells much on the analogy of the wing to that of a bat, and seems to suspect that the marsupial bones would hereafter be found; and, excepting the head, finds that the other parts of the skeleton have their corresponding bones among mammals.
Afterwards, when he saw the specimens at Munich, he was so much struck at finding the quadrate bone of Lacertian form, though Sömmerring could not detect it even with a microscope, that he is shaken in his mammalian faith, and inclines to consider the animal a reptile.
Wagler[E].
[E] System der Amphibien, 1830, p. 75.
Wagler was impressed with the resemblance of the jaws and the rounded back part of the skull to those of Dolphins, and so far as the head went conceives it to have had nothing in common with Lizards. He recognizes mammalian characters in the pelvis and sternum, and fails, like Sömmerring, to detect a quadrate bone, and finds the sum of the characters like those of other extinct animals, such as Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus, suggesting for it a position between mammals and birds. He supposed it unable to fly, that it never left the water, but swam about on the surface like a swan, and sought its food on the sea-bottom. He imagined the long arms to have been used after the fashion of turtles and penguins to row the body along; while to the claws he attributes the function of holding the females in the generative process.
Goldfuss[F].
[F] Nova Acta Acad. Leopold., 1831, Vol. XV. Pt. I. p. 103.
sees in Pterodactyle an indication of the course that nature took in changing the reptilian organization to that of birds and mammals. The less important organs, those of motion, assimilate partly to those of the bird and partly to those of the bats, but always preserve the fundament reptile type and reptile number of bones. The skull, fluctuating in character between the monitor and crocodile, hides its reptile nature under the outer form of the bird, but retains the teeth. To change the skull into a bird's skull it would only be necessary that a few separate elements should be blended together, and that a few peculiar bones should be removed. The length of the neck, varying only in a few species, is a deviation from the reptile type, and indicates an approximation to the structure of 'the bird; but the number of the vertebræ remains constant notwithstanding the increased length. The fundamental plan of the crocodile may be recognised in all the important parts of the vertebræ. The body of the reptile, to be enabled to fly, would need a larger breast and a stronger structure of the fore-limbs. The shoulder-blade of the reptile, with its extremities forming the glenoid cavity, is necessarily smaller and prolonged backward, and altered to resemble that of a bird. The scapula only formed the back part of the glenoid cavity, but it is thick and strong, suggesting an affinity with the bats.
The breast-bone, in the form of a shield, is changing into that of a bird; as are the ribs, which are attached in a peculiar way to the vertebral column. It is really the strong sternum of the Chameleon, with moveable dorsal vertebræ. The whole chest is supported by the peculiar continuation of the wings of the pubic bones (Schambein). The ischiac and pubic bones resemble those of the Chameleon, but the ilium runs a little down, like that of a bird, and is only slightly connected with two sacral vertebræ, as in reptiles, prolonging itself a little upward and forward, as in mammals. The wings of the pubic bones exist in the Turtle and Monitor, but of small extent; they are also represented in the mammals by the upward development of the pubic bones in those families, genera, and species, in which nature has indicated by variety of shape, or peculiarities of development, or by affinities with reptiles, quite a new type and capacity for variation within certain limits, which is especially the case with certain Rodents and Opossums, and Monotremes. It would not be astonishing to find in Pterodactyles the marsupial bones. And indeed the Pterodactylus crassirostris has a small tongue-shaped bone, probably belonging to the pelvis. The less important part of the skeleton, the tail, is formed precisely as in mammals, and is identical with that of the bats. Both the thigh and shin are mammalian, and only the foot retains the same number of parts as in reptiles.
This animal was enabled by means of the pelvic bones and the long hind-legs to sit like the squirrels.
We should regard this position as natural but for the long wing-finger hanging far down the sides. If it were to creep along it would have the same difficulties as a bat, and the length and weight of the head, as well as the proportional weakness of the bind limb, make it improbable that they progressed by leaping. These animals made use of their claws only to hang on to rocks and trees and to climb up steep cliffs. They could fly with their wings, and keep themselves aloft in order to catch insects or sea animals. The wide throat and the weak and high supports of the jaw-bone make it probable that they only used their teeth to capture their prey and not to mince it. By means of their long neck, which they usually bore curved backward in order to keep their balance, they could stretch out their head to their prey and change their centre of gravity, and so fly in different positions. The fundamental type of the Crocodile and Monitor leads us to suspect that they had a skin covered with scales. The approximation to the shape of the Bird makes it probable that they were feathered. And the whole outline, similar to that of the Bat, leads to the supposition that they were covered with hair, like the Monotremes. Goldfuss thinks he has got a clear insight into the covering of the body and the whole condition of the wing in examining the Pt. crassirostris. And the soft state of the stone near the bones he attributes to the presence of the soft parts of the animal; and supposes that on the original folds of the wing-membrane are to be seen tufts and bunches of curved hair directed downward and sideway[G]. And on the principal slab he finds evidence that the Pterodactyle had a mane on the neck like a horse. The tufts on the counter slab have some similarity with the feathers of the ostrich. Some very tender impressions on both plates still more resemble feathers. He recognizes the outline and faint diverging rays of a bird's feather, but never sees a strong quill. The microscope, instead of making the image clearer, makes it, on the contrary, vanish, because then the rough parts become prominent. Also on the slab which contains the Pterodactylus medius[H], are seen numerous lines and fibres diverging like a bird's feathers. And on the upper part of the belly is the appearance of a scanty texture of hairs and feathers. The visible marks of two cylinders of the thickness of a quill, made of thin substance and filled with limestone, he would regard as quills if there were clearer marks of their feathers to be seen. As a note upon this von Meyer says, after examining the slabs, that the particles considered by Goldfuss to be hairs and feathers rest upon appearances not only to be seen in the vicinity of Pterodactyles, but which occur upon many other kinds of petrifactions that have nothing in common with the Pterodactyle; and that the roughnesses of the slab have nothing to do with the folds of the wing or the muscles.
[G] This is represented in Pl. 7, 8 of his memoir, loc. cit.
[H] Pl. 6, , Vol. Pt. 1.