326 FOSSIL REPTILES. 



bones were found serving to confirm this result, and indicate 

 an animal not unlike the plesiosaurus or ichthyosaurus. 



It was not merely in size that the class of reptiles stood pre- 

 eminent in those ancient days. They were also distinguished 

 by forms more varied and singular than any which we now 

 behold existing. We are about to examine a genus, the ^^ero- 

 dadylus, or wing-toed reptile,which had the power of flying, not 

 by means of its ribs, like the draco volansy nor by a wing without 

 distinct fingers, like that of birds, nor by a wing in which the 

 thumb alone is free, like that of bats, but by a wing sustained 

 principally on one very elongated toe, while the others pre- 

 served their usual shortness and their claws. At the same 

 time, these flying reptiles (almost a contradiction in terms) had 

 a long neck and the beak of a bird, which must have given 

 them a most remarkable and anomalous aspect. There were 

 two species. 



The first is termed by M. Cuvier, Pterodactylus longirostris, 

 from the length of the muzzle. The first knowledge of it was 

 owing to M. CoUini, Director of the Museum of the Elector 

 Palatine at Manheim. The skeleton was found in one of those 

 marly, foliated, grey, and sometimes yellowish rocks of Aich- 

 stedt, which abound in dendrites and animal petrifactions. 

 The skeleton was wonderfully entire. 



M. Blumenbach thought it was a bird of the order palmi- 

 pedes ; but, as M. Cuvier observes, a bird would have larger 

 ribs, and each provided with a recurrent apophysis. Its meta- 

 tarsus would have formed but a single bone, and would 

 not have been composed of as many bones as there are toes. 

 Its wing would have had but three divisions after the fore-arm, 

 and not five like the pterodactylus. Its pelvis would have had 

 quite a different extent, and its osseous tail a totally different 

 form ; it would be widened, not narrow and conical. There 

 would have been no teeth in the beak, for anything of that 

 kind in birds appertains to the corneous envelope, not to the 

 bony skeleton. The vertebrae of the neck woulrl have been 



