20 



NEBRASKA ORNITHOLOGISTS' UNION 



"J'he avian characters are as follows: wrist bird-like; foot avian 

 throughout and adapted to biped locomotion; pelvis considered avian; 

 bones hollow and pneumatic; feathered at least in part, as already 

 described, a character which is decidedly avian; tarso-metatarsus cov- 

 ered with scales like modern birds. At the best it was a much more 

 primitive affair than its later descendents. Its adaptations were for 

 arboreal life, but as some think not for long- sustained flight; never- 

 theless it enabled Jurassic times to boast of full-fledged birds. Doubt- 

 less at a still earlier period there were generalized progenitors clad 

 also with feathers, or perhaps feather-like scales, yet neither distinctly 

 reptiles nor distinctly birds. 



Research will doubtless reveal these ancestors; meanwhile Archae- 

 opteryx macrura (the primordial winged creature with the long tail). 



Fig. 45 — Skull of the Lizard-bird, ^irchdcopteri/.r mdcrum, showing likeness to that 

 of a typical bird but lacking a horny beak and with jaws set with conical teeth. 

 Eemnants of sclerotic plates are seen in the eye orbit. In life the appearance 

 of the head was probably lizard-like rather than bird-like. 



found in the upper Jurassic, stands as the oldest known bird. Its 

 advent marks the greatest advance of Jurassic time. The first speci- 

 men found in the lithographic quarries of Solenhofen, dating back 

 to 1861, was represented by a single feather, or rather its imprint, to 

 which the name Archaeopteryx IWiographica was applied, and it is a ques- 

 tion if this should not be the specific designation instead of A. macrura, 

 which name is still applied by some palaeontologists. Within a few 

 months remains of the bird itself were found, and are now preserved 

 in the British Museum. This is the specimen ordinarily known as 

 Archaeopteryx macrura. 



In 1877 another and still better one was found, which is now pre- 

 served in the Royal Museum of Natural History in Berlin. Though 

 scarcely as large as a crow Archaeopteryx enjoys the distinction of 

 great scientific weig'ht. It might have been discovered at the outset 

 that this ancient bird had teeth, but not suspecting anything of the 

 sort it occurred to no one to look for them, and those who scrutinized 



