SAUROENITHES. 



267 



meet with Eagles, Kites, Owls, Secretary-birds, and several 

 extinct types (such as Palceocercus and Palceetus). Of the 

 Post-Tertiary Raptorcs the most interesting is the Harpa- 

 gornis of New Zealand, a colossal bird of prey which was a 

 contemporary of the Moas. 



Sub-class III. — Saurornithes. 



Order I. Saurur^. — This order includes only the extinct 

 bird, the Archceopteryx macrura (fig. 591), a single specimen 

 of which — and that but a fragmentary one ^ — has been dis- 

 covered in the Lithographic Slates of Solenhofen (Upper 

 Oolites). This extraordinary bird appears to have been 

 about as big as a Eook ; but it differs from all known birds 

 in having two free claws belonging to the wing, and in 



Fig. 591. — Arcliceopteryx macrura, showing tail and taO-feathers, with detached bones. 



having a long lizard-like tail, longer than the hody, and com- 

 posed of separate vertebrce. The tail was destitute of any 

 ploughshare-hone, and each vertebra carried a single pair of 

 cjuills. The metacarpal hones, also, were not anchylosed together 

 as they are in all other known birds, living or extinct, and two 

 of the digits appear to have been unguicidate. 



^ A second, and seemingly more perfect, specimen of Arcliceopteryx has 

 recently been discovered in the Solenhofen Slates, but no description of this 

 has as yet been published. 



