regarded the Pterodactyle as an unknown kind of bat, and thought that Cuvier was misled by Collini's imperfect description. He believed that he found in them different kinds of teeth as in mammals; and regarded them as differing from bats chiefly in having larger eye-holes, a longer neck, four fingers and four toes, a longer metatarsus, and in having but one elongated finger; and found the closest analogue of the fingers in Pteropus marginatus of Bengal. And although inclined to place the Pterodactyle between Pteropus and Galeopithecus, he suspects from the bird-like characters of the head and feet that its true place is intermediate between mammals and birds.
Oken[D].
[D] Isis, 1818, p. 551.
Oken reasoned carefully so far as his materials went. He dwells much on the analogy of the wing to that of a bat, and seems to suspect that the marsupial bones would hereafter be found; and, excepting the head, finds that the other parts of the skeleton have their corresponding bones among mammals.
Afterwards, when he saw the specimens at Munich, he was so much struck at finding the quadrate bone of Lacertian form, though Sömmerring could not detect it even with a microscope, that he is shaken in his mammalian faith, and inclines to consider the animal a reptile.
Wagler[E].
[E] System der Amphibien, 1830, p. 75.
Wagler was impressed with the resemblance of the jaws and the rounded back part of the skull to those of Dolphins, and so far as the head went conceives it to have had nothing in common with Lizards. He recognizes mammalian characters in the pelvis and sternum, and fails, like Sömmerring, to detect a quadrate bone, and finds the sum of the characters like those of other extinct animals, such as Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus, suggesting for it a position between mammals and birds. He supposed it unable to fly, that it never left the water, but swam about on the surface like a swan, and sought its food on the sea-bottom. He imagined the long arms to have been used after the fashion of turtles and penguins to row the body along; while to the claws he attributes the function of holding the females in the generative process.
Goldfuss[F].
[F] Nova Acta Acad. Leopold., 1831, Vol. XV. Pt. I. p. 103.