SAUROPTERYGIA 75 



In quick succession there followed many other discoveries of 

 plesiosaurs, not only in England but elsewhere in Europe. The 

 famous English anatomist and paleontologist, Sir Richard Owen, 

 to whom we owe, perhaps, more than to anyone else our present 

 knowledge of these animals, the eccentric Hawkins of England, the 

 learned von Meyer of Germany, and, in later times, more especially 

 Seeley and Andrews of England, Fraas of Germany, Bogalobou 

 and Riabanin of Russia, as well as many others, have brought to 

 light during the past century many and varied forms of these sea- 

 reptiles. Blaineville in 1835 gave to the plesiosaurs an ordinal 

 rank under the class Ichthyosauria, and even the astute Owen 

 in 1839 united them with the ichthyosaurs as a suborder of his 

 Enaliosauria, or "sea-saurians." He called them Sauropterygia, or 

 "reptile-finned," and these terms, Enaliosauria, Ichthyopterygia, 

 and Sauropterygia. have long persisted in works on natural his- 

 tory because of the prestige of Owen's name. As we shall see later, 

 the plesiosaurs are really of remote kinship to the ichthyosaurs, 

 and there is no such natural group as the Enaliosauria. It often 

 takes years to distinguish between apparent and real relationships 

 among living organisms, and both of these groups of sea-saurians 

 have had a sorry experience in the treatment they have received 

 from nomenclators. 



Perhaps because of the writings of Dean Buckland in his famous 

 Bridgewater Treatise, in large part a theological disquisition, though 

 of real scientific merit, the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs early 

 became widely and popularly known, and, even to this day, these 

 reptiles, together with the dinosaurs, first made known by Rev. 

 Dr. Mantell, are often supposed to be the most typical and horrid 

 of monsters. Many and fabulous are the tales that have been 

 told of them in literature both grave and gay. The preacher 

 adduced them as evidences of the great world-catastrophe told in 

 biblical history, and the German student sings of them to the tune 

 of the "Lorelei": 



Es rauscht in Schachtelhalmen, verdachtig leuchtet das Meer; 

 Da schwimmt mit Thranen in Auge ein Ichthyosaurus einher. 

 Ihn jammert der Zeiten Verderbniss, denn ein sehr bedenklicher Ton 

 War neuerlich eingerissen in der Liasforrnation. 



