BIRDS WITH TEETH. 
341 
is difficult to believe them to have been made by anything but 
Iguanodon,* lends further confirmation to this conclusion. 
The first evidence of the existence of a bird in strata of 
Oolitic age was furnished by the discovery of the impression 
of a single feather in a slab of lithographic stone from Solen- 
hofen, described and figured by Hermann von Meyer in 1 86 1 .f 
To this fossil impression H. von Meyer gave the name of 
Archaeopteryx lithographica. 
Later on, in the same year, Professor Andreas Wagner com- 
municated to the .Royal Academy of Sciences in Munich the 
discovery (in the same formation at Solenhofen) of a considerable 
portion of the skeleton of an animal with impressions of feathers 
radiating fanwise from each anterior limb, diverging obliquely 
in a single series from each side of a long tail. 
Dr. Wagner’s paper (written shortly before his death) was 
wholly founded on the reports of M. Witte of Hanover and 
Dr. Oppel of Munich. From their information he was led to 
conclude that the affinities of this wonderful creature were 
strongest to the Reptilia, and he regarded its natural covering 
as merely “ presenting a deceptive resemblance to feathers,” 
and named it Griphosaurus. 
Hermann von Meyer concluded that the impressions repre- 
sented actual feathers, and that the single feather, already 
noticed by him, doubtless belonged to the same animal. But, 
even so, they need not necessarily be derived from a bird. 
Indeed, the feathered fossil from the lithographic stone of 
Pappenheim, in Dr. Haberlein’s collection (of which he had 
also heard) differed essentially from our birds, and need not 
necessarily be a bird. The simple tarsus (writes von Meyer) 
shows that the animal does not belong to the Pterodactyles, 
and the formation of the tail contradicts the idea that we con- 
nect with our birds, yet the feathers are undistinguishable from 
those of birds. 
Happily for British paleontologists, this remarkable avian 
fossil was secured for our national collection in 1862, and a 
memoir thereon was presented to the Royal Society by Professor 
Owen,J and read on November 20 of that year. 
I also published a figure, and gave a brief account of the 
Archaeopteryx in the “ Intellectual Observer ” for December 
1862 (vol. ii. p. 314). 
The specimen is preserved in intaglio and relievo on two 
slabs of Solenhofen limestone, the lower of which, doubtless, 
represents the ancient surface of what was once tidal mud, 
* See “ Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc.” 1862, vol. xviii. p. 248. ( 
f “ Jahfbuch fiir Mineralogie,” 1861, p. 561. 
t See “Phil. Trans.” 1863, p. 33, pi. 1-4. 
