The Story of the Rocks 



131 



num. The pterodactyl's skull is prolonged into a prominent 

 beak like that of a bird, while in some instances its teeth 

 are as scarce as those of the proverbial hen. Yet others pos- 

 sessed numerous strong, sharp teeth lodged in sockets in the 

 jaw. The cavity of the skull bears a great similarity to that 

 of birds, while the sutures or lines of union of the skull 

 bones, as in the bird, have largely disappeared. The zo- 

 ologist believes this to be a case of "parallel evolution." 

 The pterodactyl had dreams of becoming a bird, but never 

 quite achieved his ambition. 



But if the attempt at 

 aviation by the true rep- 

 tile was short-lived, he 

 yet produced the great- 

 est aviators among ani- 

 mals — the birds. 



In the famous Solen- 

 hofen quarries in Ger- 

 many there was discov- 

 ered on August 15, 1861, 

 the print of a single 

 feather, and a few weeks 

 later the impresdon of 

 the bird itself was dis- 

 covered. Archaeopteryx, 

 the primitive or ancient 

 bird, as his name signi- 

 fies, was indeed primi- 

 was distinctly 

 for he wore 

 a distinction 



Restoration of Arcii^opteryx 

 From Lucas, ' ' Animals of the Past. ' ' 

 Conriid Lantern Slide 



<'i)l>jl fuDiislieil hi/ 

 CoiniHtity, Cltii-ayn. 



tive, but 



a bird, 



feathers, 



possessed by none of his 



reptilian ancestors that 



we now know. And yet the improbability of a bird 



hatching full-fledged out of a reptile's egg, as St. Ililaire 



suggested, is so unlikely, that we must assume many 



intermediate stages in avian development; stages, which 



Mother Earth has as yet declined to reveal. While Archas 



opteryx is a full-fledged bird so far as its feathers are 



concerned, it shows its reptilian parentage in several ways. 



The modern l)ird possesses only a few small vertebra in 



lieu of a fully formed tail, from which the tail feathers 



radiate fan-like; Archaopteryx however liad a long reptilian 



tail, with numerous vertebrae, and the feathers arranged in 



a row on either side. It still had a full set of teeth like the 



other early birds, Hesperornis and Ichthyornis, which were 



discovered by Professor Marsh in 1870 in the chalk beds of 



