CHAPTER VI 



THE ARCH^OPTERYX, OR LIZARD- 

 TAILED BIRD 



(SUBCLASS Arch&ornithes) 



| EOLOGICAL Occurrence. The oldest bird of which we have any 

 knowledge, called the Archaopteryx, or Lizard-tailed bird, the latter 

 name from its slender lizard-like but curiously feathered tail, is found 

 fossil in the lithographic slates of Solenhofen, Bavaria, where its 

 presence was first made known by the discovery in 1861 of the impression of 

 a single feather. The existence of a bird in a geological horizon of such rela- 

 tively great antiquity as this Upper Jurassic was at first somewhat doubted, 

 but a year or two after the first discovery a second specimen, showing much of 

 the skeleton, was obtained, and in 1877 another, these being all thus far 

 secured. The ex mple found in 1863 is now preserved in the British Museum, 

 London, while the last, and as it proves, best example, is in the Berlin Museum. 

 These two specimens, which are sometimes regarded as representing two distinct 

 species (Archaopteryx lithographica and A. siemensi], supplement each other, 

 and from them a fairly complete account may be gleaned of this remarkable 

 bird. They have been very minutely studied by many eminent anatomists, as 

 becomes their importance in affording almost our only actual knowledge of the 

 transition between reptiles and birds. 



Anatomy, Size, etc. The Lizard-tailed bird was apparently about the size 

 of our common Crow, being nearly eighteen inches in length. It had appar- 

 ently a long, narrow body, while the head was small, pyramidal, nearly flat on 

 top, and provided with large openings for the eyes. The upper jaw, and prob- 

 ably the lower as well, was provided with numerous teeth, which appear to 

 have been set in a groove. There was no beak, for the teeth extended to the 

 very tip of the jaw. The backbone consisted of some fifty biconcave vertebrae, 

 of which number ten or eleven are regarded as belonging to the neck, a less 

 number than is known in any modern bird, the lowest number being thirteen. 

 In place of the short, usually solid bones of the tail found in present birds, 

 Arch&opteryx had a long, slender tail of about twenty free bones exactly as in 

 many reptiles. Certain of these bones, perhaps each of them, supported a pair 

 of long tail feathers. These .feathers at present lie at an angle of about thirty 

 degrees to the bones of the tail, and as they are pretty closely matted together, it 

 is difficult to determine the exact number, some students placing them at twenty 

 pairs, and others, as Gadow, as low as twelve pairs; the truth perhaps lies some- 



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