The Ornithosauria / An elementary study of the bones of Pterodactyles made from fossil remains found in the Cambridge Upper Greensand, and arranged in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge

by H. G. Seeley

(3) "Son bassin auroit eu une toute autre étendue et sa queue osseuse un toute autre forme; elle seroit élargie, et non pas grêle et conique." The pelvis of Pterodactyle is not reptilian, and no living reptile has a pelvis like it. It is not unlike the pelvis of a Monotreme, but the ilium is more Avian. It resembles the pelvis of Dicynodon. And the discovery of a long-tailed bird-like the Archæopteryx shows that the tail is like that of old birds, even if it also presents some analogy in form to that of certain reptiles and mammals.

(4) "Il n'y auroit pas eu de dents au bec; les dents des harles ne tiennent qu'à l'enveloppe cornée, et non à la charpente osseuse." This is not a reptilian character. Among reptiles some tribes have teeth, others want them; and among mammals some animals are without teeth, though they are so characteristic of the class. It is an anomaly that birds should all be toothless. And so, without citing the supposed teeth of Archæopteryx, it may be affirmed that it would be no more remarkable for some birds to have teeth than it is for some mammals and reptiles to be without them.

(5) "Les vertèbres du cou auroient été plus nombreuses. Aucun oiseau n'en a moins de neuf; les palmipèdes, en particulier, en ont depuis douze jusqu'à vingt-trois, et l'on n'en voit ici que six ou tout au plus sept." This is a variation of detail such as, had it occurred among birds, would hardly have been deemed evidence of their affinities. When the variation of the neck-vertebræ ranges from 23 to 9, the further reduction of the number to 7 becomes insignificant, and does not show that the animal was a reptile.

(6) "Au contraire, les vertèbres du dos l'auroient été beau-coup moins. Il semble qu'il y en ait plus de vingt, et les oiseaux en ont de sept à dix, ou tout au plus onze." This modification is obviously the result of smaller development of the pelvic bones from front to back, and hence of the small number of vertebræ in the sacrum. It does not support the reference of Pterodactyles to the class of reptiles.

Speaking of the teeth, it is said, "Elles sont toutes simples, coniques, et à peu près semblables entre elles comme dans les crocodiles, les monitors, et d'autres lézards." The teeth of Pterodactyles are (in the skull) for the most part in the premaxillary bones, in which it is so characteristic for the teeth of animals to, be merely conical and simple. Therefore it would have been difficult to imagine the teeth to have been anything but what they are, whatever the affinities of the Pterodactyle might be.

It is remarked, "La longueur du cou est proportionée à celle de la téte. On y voit cinq vertèbres grandes et prismatiques comme celles des oiseaux à long cou, et une plus petite se montre à chaque extrémité." This adds nothing to the evidence for its reptilian character.

"Ce qui est le plus fait pour étonner, c'est que cette longue téte et ce long cou soient portés sur un si petit corps; les oiseaux seuls offrent de semblable proportions, et sans doute c'est, avec la longueur du grand doigt, ce qui avoit determiné quelques naturalistes à rapporter notre animal à cette classe." Nor is this evidence that the animal was a reptile. And in many minor matters Cuvier is careful to show how their modifications resemble those of birds; and when this is not so, birds are the only animals from which he finds them varying. And the few suggestions which are thrown out respecting their affinities with lizards are upon points which are also common to birds.

Thus what Cuvier did was to distinguish these animals from birds, and incidentally to show that their organization was a modification of that of the Avian class. And the legitimate inference would have been that their systematic place was near the birds, and not that they were reptiles.

But in Germany Cuvier's views on Pterodactyles have by no means been submissively received; and great anatomists, since he wrote, have propounded and defended views as various as those of the anatomists who preceded him, and with no less confidence in the results of their science. In the brief space at my command it would be impossible to do justice to the works of this array of philosophers, and therefore I present in a somewhat condensed version the epitome of their conclusions given by Hermann von Meyer in his Reptilien aus dem Lithographischen Schiefer der Jura. They form a commentary on the casts of Solenhofen Pterodactyles contained in the Woodwardian Museum.

Sömmerring