58 Vertebrate Palaeontology of Cambridgeshire 



As regards the history of the discovery of vertebrate 

 remains in the so-called coprolite band of the Cambridge Green- 

 sand, it may be mentioned that the commencement of the fine 

 collection of bones of pterodactyles in the Sedgwick Museum 

 was made by the Rev. H. G. Day, of St John's College ; other 

 well-known collectors being Messrs Barrett, Carter, Farren, 

 Jesson, and Walker. 



By far the most interesting and most important of the 

 vertebrate remains from the Cambridge Greensand are those 

 of birds, the first reference to which appears to have been 

 made by Sir R. Owen 1 , who wrote of them as indicating a 

 species of the size of a woodcock. In 1864 the generic names 

 Pelagornis (Pelargornis) and Palaeocolymbus (Palaeocolyntus) 

 were proposed by Prof. H. G. Seeley 2 for these birds, but 

 without any definition. The second name was again used by 

 the same writer 3 , with a definition, in 1864, but is unavailable 

 on account of preoccupation. It was therefore replaced by the 

 term Enaliornis 4 , of which two species, E. barretti and E. 

 sedgwicki, were recognized. When these remains were first 

 discovered they were the only evidence of the existence of 

 birds throughout the strata intervening between the Upper 

 Jurassic horizon of the long-tailed Archaeopteryx to the 

 Tertiary, as they still are in this country to the present day. 

 The subsequent discovery of birds furnished with teeth in the 

 Cretaceous of the United States rendered it probable that 

 their approximate contemporaries of the Cambridge Greensand 

 were armed in a similar manner ; this is supported by the 

 fact that the latter, unlike modern birds, have biconcave 

 vertebrae, similar to those of the American Cretaceous genus 

 Ichthyornis. 



Next in point of interest to those of birds come the 



1 Palaeontology, 2nd ed. 327, 1861. 



2 Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. i. 228. 



3 Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (3) xvm. 110. 



4 Seeley, "Index to Ornithosauria, etc. in Woodward. Mus." xvn. 

 (names only), and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxn. 496 (1876). 



