98 British Fossils — Prof. Owen on Pterodactyle. 



Althougli remains of Flying Eeptiles have long been recognized 

 as occurring in the Lias, the Stonesfield Slate, the Greensand, and 

 Chalk of Britain, yet their presence has been indicated only by- 

 detached bones — a jaw with teeth, or a skull more or less entire — 

 by the help of which, however, that skilful comparative anatomist, 

 Prof. Owen, has been enabled to prove the existence, in Britain, in 

 Mesozoic times, of volant reptiles far surpassing in magnitude those 

 marvellously perfect remains of Pterodactyles from the Solenhofen 

 stone. 



So long ago as 1829, Dr. Buckland communicated the discovery 

 of parts of the skeleton of Pterodactylus macronyx, from the Lias of 

 Lyme Eegis, to the Geological Society of London (Trans. Geol. Soc. 

 1835, 4to. Vol. III). 



Later (in 1858), Prof. Owen described the head, &c., of probably 

 the same species, which he then named DimorpJiodon.^ 



After an interval of ten years more, Mr. Henry Woodward, when 

 visiting Lyme Regis in March, 1868, observed in the collection of 

 the late Mr. Henry Marder, M.E.C.S,, an entire series of caudal 

 vertebrae, 20_i inches in length, surrounded by ossified fibres or 

 tendons, so as to form a slender rod-like, and almost inflexible 

 rudder, closely resembling the tail of Bhamphorhynchus from the 

 Solenhofen stone. The specimen was at once secured for the British 

 Museum. In the following August, the Earl of Enniskillen sent up 

 from Lyme Regis a slab of Lias (obtained by Mr. James Marder, of 

 Lyme), containing the greater part of the bones and head oi Dimor- 

 phodon, showing that the remains previously described by Dr. Buck- 

 land in 1829, and by Prof. Owen in 1858, really belong to one 

 species, and, what is also very interesting, displaying remains of a 

 caudal series of vertebrae, identical with those forming the entire 

 detached tail obtained from Mr. Henry Marder. 



Thus, after an interval of forty years. Professor Owen has been 

 enabled to reconstruct and present to palaeontologists a complete 

 figure of this truly remarkable type of British Pterodactyle. The 

 anatomist who, with a box of recent bones before him, sets to work 

 to build up the skeleton of a bird, or of a qiiadruped, finds his task 

 difficult ; but how vastly more difficult the task, and more skilful 

 must be the comparative anatomist who would rehabilitate the 

 scattered framework of one of the ancient denizens of our world, the 

 fashion of whose very skeleton is now gone out of date, and has no 

 living analogue with which we may compare it. Such is the task 

 Prof. Owen has performed, and we cannot but feel a pleasure that so 

 rare a fossil has been rescued for the benefit of science. 



Dimorphodon macronyx, as we are now able to read it, by the 

 light of Prof. Owen's monograph, differs in a remarkable manner 

 from the long-tailed flying lizard of Solenhofen (A'hamphorhynchus), 

 not only in the form of its head, but also in the proportions of the 

 hind-limbs. 



In Dimorpliodon the hind-limbs are large, and evidently capable 

 of supporting the body, both in climbing and crawling ; the feet are 

 '* lltpoils (Sections) British Association, Leeds Meeting, 1858, p. 97. 



