FLYING DRAGONS, OR FTERODACTYLES. 159 



the contrary, existed long ages before man or any of 

 the higher types of mammals had made their appear- 

 ance on the globe ; being, indeed, characteristic of the 

 Secondary epoch of the geologists, the relations of 

 which to the present epoch have been indicated in the 

 chapter on Fish-Lizards. 



Before the master-mind of Cuvier indicated the true 

 affinities of the original specimen of the Pterodactyle, 

 one naturalist had regarded it as a bird, and another as 

 a bat, and it will therefore be interesting to glance at 

 the chief features in the bony anatomy of these crea- 

 tures, to see how the great anatomist was justified in 

 his conclusions. For this purpose we give a figure in 

 the woodcut on page 141 of the skeleton of a small 

 Pterodactyle obtained from the Lithographic lime- 

 stones of Bavaria, and remarkable for its beautiful 

 state of preservation. It will be seen from this figure 

 that the neck of these creatures is comparatively short, 

 with but few joints, or vertebrae, in which respect it 

 is unlike that of a bird. The skull is, however, wonder- 

 fully bird-like in the figured specimen, although in some 

 species it is much shorter and more lizard-like. There 

 are, however, certain features in the structure of the 

 skull, into the consideration of which it would be diffi- 

 cult to enter in the present volume, by which it is at 

 once distinguished from the skull of a bird. The 

 presence of a number of sharply pointed teeth (shown 

 in Fig. 43) was, indeed, at one period regarded as an- 

 other point in which Pterodactyles differed from birds ; 

 but it has been subsequently found that many if not 



