| Phalanges of the wing finger | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I. | II. | III. | IV. | |
| 7¾ | 8½ | [7?] | 6½ | } length of each bone in inches. |
| 5½ | 7¾ | 5½ | [4½?] | |
| 4½ | —— | —— | —— | |
The femur is represented by many examples—one 3¾ inches long, and others less than 3 inches long (29/10). In Campylognathus, which has so much in common with the jaw and the wing bones in size, the upper leg bone is 28/10 inches. Therefore if we assign the larger femur to the larger wing, the femur will be relatively longer in all species of Rhamphocephalus than in Campylognathus. Only one example of a tibia is preserved. It is 3½ inches long, or only 1/10 inch shorter than the bone in Campylognathus, which has the femur 28/10 inches, so that I refer the tibia of Rhamphocephalus to the species which has the intermediate length of wing. These coincidences with Campylognathus establish a close affinity, and may raise the question whether the Upper Lias species may not be included in the Stonesfield Slate genus Rhamphocephalus.
The late Professor Phillips, in his Geology of Oxford, attempted a restoration of the Stonesfield Ornithosaur, and produced a picturesque effect ([p. 164]); but no restoration is possible without such attention to the proportions of the bones as we have indicated.
OXFORD CLAY
A few bones of flying reptiles have been found in the Lower Oxford Clay near Peterborough, and others in the Upper Oxford Clay at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire. A single tail vertebra from the Middle Oxford Clay, near Oxford, long since came under my own notice, and shows that these animals belong to a long-tailed type like Campylognathus. The cervical vertebræ are remarkable for being scarcely longer than the dorsal vertebræ; and the dorsal are at least half as long again as is usual, having rather the proportion of bones in the back of a crocodile.
LITHOGRAPHIC SLATE
Long-tailed Pterodactyles are beautifully preserved in the Lithographic Limestone of the south of Bavaria, at Solenhofen, and the quarries in its neighbourhood, often with the skeleton or a large part of it flattened out in the plane of bedding of the rock. Fine skeletons are preserved in the superb museum at Munich, at Heidelberg, Bonn, Haarlem, and London, and are all referred to the genus Rhamphorhynchus or to Scaphognathus. It is a type with powerfully developed wings and a long, stiff tail, very similar to that of Dimorphodon, so that some naturalists refer both to the same family. There is some resemblance.
The type which is most like Dimorphodon is the celebrated fossil at Bonn, sometimes called Pterodactylus crassirostris, which in a restored form, with a short tail, has been reproduced in many text-books. No tail is preserved in the slab, and I ventured to give the animal a tail for the first time in a restoration ([p. 163]) published by the Illustrated London News in 1875, which accompanied a report of a Royal Institution lecture. Afterwards, in 1882, Professor Zittel, of Munich, published the same conclusion. The reason for restoring the tail was that the animal had the head constructed in the same way as Pterodactyles with a long tail, and showed differences from types in which the tail is short; and there is no known short-tailed Pterodactyle, with wrist and hand bones, such as characterise this animal. The side of the face has a general resemblance to the Pterodactyles from the Lias, for although the framework is firmer, the four apertures in the head are similarly placed. The nostril is rather small and elongated, and ascends over the larger antorbital vacuity. The orbit for the eye is the largest opening in the head, so that these three apertures successively increase in size, and are followed by the vertically elongated post-orbital vacuity. The teeth are widely spaced apart, and those in the skull extend some distance backward to the end of the maxillary bone. There are few teeth in the lower jaw, and they correspond to the large anterior teeth of Dimorphodon, there being no teeth behind the nasal opening. The lower jaw is straight, and the extremities of the jaws met when the mouth was closed. The breast bone does not show the keel which is so remarkable in Rhamphorhynchus, which may be attributed to its under side being exposed, so as to exhibit the pneumatic foramina.
The ribs have double heads, more like those of a Crocodile in the region of the back than is the case with the bird-like ribs from Stonesfield. The second joint in the wing finger may be longer than the first—a character which would tend to the association of this Pterodactyle with species from the Lias; a relation to which attention was first drawn by Mr. E. T. Newton, who described the Whitby skull.