SOLENHOFEN STONE. 
337 
Fig. 320. 
Skeleton of Pterodactylus eras- 
sirostris. Oolite of Pappen- 
heim, near Solenhofeu. 
a. This bone, consistingof four 
joints, is part of the fifth or 
outermost digit elongated, 
as in bats, for the support 
of a wing. 
Solenhofen Stone. —The celebrated lithographic stone of 
Solenhofen in Bavaria, appears to be of intermediate age 
between the Kimmeridge clay and the Coral Rag, presently 
to be described. It affords a remarkable example of the 
variety of fossils which may be preserved under favorable 
circumstances, and what delicate im¬ 
pressions of the tender parts of certain 
animals and plants may be retained 
where the sediment is of extreme fine¬ 
ness. Although the number of testa- 
cea in this slate is small, and the 
plants few, and those all marine. 
Count Miinster had determined no 
less than 237 species of fossils when I 
saw his collection in 1833 ; and among 
them no less than seven species of fly¬ 
ing reptiles or pterodactyls (see Fig. 
320), six saurians, three tortoises, six¬ 
ty species of fish, forty-six of Crustacea, 
and twenty-six of insects. These in¬ 
sects, among which is a libellula, or 
dragon-fly, must have been blown out 
to sea, probably from the same land 
to which the pterodactyls, and other contemporaneous air- 
breathers, resorted. 
In the same slate of Solenhofen a fine example was met 
with in 1862 of the skeleton of a bird almost entire, and re¬ 
taining even its feathers so perfect that the vanes as well as 
the shaft are preserved. The head was at first supposed to 
be wanting, but Mr. Evans detected on the slab what seems 
to be the impression of the cranium and beak, much resem¬ 
bling in size and shape that of the jay or woodcock. This 
valuable specimen is now in the British Museum, and has 
been called by Professor Owen Archaeopteryx macrura. Al¬ 
though anatomists agree that it is a true bird, yet they also 
find that in the length of the bones of the tail, and some 
other minor points of its anatomy, it approaches more near¬ 
ly to reptiles than any known living bird. In the living 
representatives of the class Aves, the tail-feathers are at¬ 
tached to a coccygian bone, consisting of several vertebrae 
united together, whereas in the Archaeopteryx the tail is 
composed of twenty vertebrae, each of which supports a pair 
of quill-feathers. The first five only of the vertebrae, as seen 
in A, have transverse processes, the fifteen remaining ones 
become gradually longer and more tapering. The feathers 
diverge outward from them at an angle of 45°o 
15 
