THIRD ANNUAL MEETING 



13 



such as the carnivorous Megalosaxirus and Ceteosaurus, and that of the 

 Ornithischia (bird-like pelvis) such as Ignanodon. Probably the first 

 evidence of bird life in Amei-ica dates back to the famous footprints 

 of the Connecticut Valley, and yet, as is now known, these same tracks 

 were made mostly, if not wholly, by dinosaurs. Some of them must surely 

 have been very bird-like; their bones were light and hollow and their 

 tridactyl tracks were so like those birds that there is justification for 

 the book published by the commonwealth of Massachusetts entitled 

 Ornithichnites (stonj^ bird-tracks), a title subsequently changed to 

 Ornithoidichnites (stony bird-like tracks), greatly to the credit of the 

 authors, who thereby anticipated knowledge which is now the common 

 property of every text-book of geology. The first bird-tracks of that 



^py^i^lu^Cimxxu^ 



Fig. 12 — Giant Kingfisher. Fig. 13 — Ancliisaurus. Fig. 14 — Ornithosuchus. 



Fig. 15 — Ptcnodracon. Fig. 16— Scaphognathus. Fig. 17 — Pterodactylus. 



Fig. 18— Dimorpliodon. Fig. 19— Rhamphorhynchus. Fig. 20 — Ornithostoma. 



Skulls of Bird (Fig. 12), Dinosaurs (Figs. 13 and 14), and six genera of Pterodactyls 

 (Figs. 15 to 20) for comparison as to general structural plan. 



region ploughed up by Pliny Moody, just a century ago, led to the 

 discoverj'^ of thousands of others ranging in size from pigmies to 

 giants. The commonest were about as large as those of an ostrich. 

 According to popular conception they w^ere all made by birds. Some 

 ten thousand such tracks furnished no evidence to the contrary until 

 one set was found which proved to be unique and instructive, inas- 

 much as the slab not only showed the tracks of a distinctly biped- 

 like animal, but also showed the imprints of the five fingers of the 

 hand which is distinctly un-bird-like. It must have been somewhat 

 bird-like, perhaps resembling in general a domestic fowl divested of 

 plumage; but the five functional fingers are irreconcilable with the 

 idea of a bird whose fingers, as such, are functionless and are fused 

 into a support for the -^dng feathers. 



