Now, the record of the rocks tells us that one great order of reptiles somehow acquired the power of flying, and flitted about as bats or flying-foxes do now. Since they were undoubtedly reptiles—in spite of certain resemblances to birds—we have ventured to call them “flying dragons,” as others have done. The notion of a flying reptile may perhaps seem strange, or even impossible to some persons; but no one has a right to say such and such a thing “cannot be,” or is “contrary to Nature,” for the world is full of wonderful things such as we should have considered impossible had we not seen them with our eyes. Charles Kingsley, in his delightful fairy tale, The Water-Babies, makes some humorous remarks on that matter, which we may quote here. He says, "Did not learned men too hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyls; but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist."
The illustrious Cuvier observes that it was not merely in magnitude that reptiles stood pre-eminent in ancient days, but they were distinguished by forms more varied and extraordinary than any that are now known to exist on the face of the earth. Among these extinct beings of ages incalculably remote, are the Pterodactyls,[30] or “wing-fingered” creatures, which had the power of flight, not by a membrane stretched over elongated fingers as in bats, nor by a wing without distinct or complete fingers, as in birds, but by a membrane supported chiefly by a greatly extended little finger, the other fingers being short and armed with claws.
[30] From the Greek—pteron, wing, and dactylos, finger.
The only reptile now existing which has any power of sustaining itself in the air is the little Draco Volans, or “flying lizard,” so called; but this can scarcely be regarded as a flying animal. Its hinder pair of ribs, however, are prolonged to such an extent that they support a broad expansion of the skin, so spread out from side to side as to perform the office of a parachute, thus enabling the creature to spring from tree to tree by means of extended leaps; and this it does with wonderful activity.
Many forms of Pterodactyl are known. Some were not larger than a sparrow; others about the size of a woodcock; yet others much larger, the largest of all having a spread of wing (or rather of the flying membranes) of twenty-five feet! It has been concluded that they could perch on trees, hang against perpendicular surfaces, such as the edge of a cliff, stand firmly on the ground, and probably crawl on all fours with wings folded. It may be well at once to point out that the Pterodactyl had no true wings like those of a bird, but a thin membrane similar to that of a bat, only differently supported; so it must be understood that, when we use the word “wing,” it is not in the scientific sense that we are using it, but in the popular sense, just as we might speak of the wing of a bat, although the bat has no true wing. Figs. [32], [33], [34], and [35] will give the reader some idea of the various forms presented by the skeletons of Pterodactyls, or, as some authorities call them, Pterosaurians (winged lizards). Great differences of opinion have existed among palæontologists as to whether they are more reptilian than bird-like, or even mammalian.
More than a hundred years ago, in 1784, Collini, who was Director of the Elector-Palatine Museum at Mannheim, described a skeleton which he regarded as that of an unknown marine animal. It was a long-billed Pterodactyl from the famous lithographic stone of Solenhofen in Bavaria. The specimen was figured in the Memoirs of the Palatine Academy. Collini was able from this specimen to make out the head, neck, small tail, left leg, and two arms; but beyond that, he was at a loss. His conclusion was that the skeleton belonged neither to a bat nor to a bird, and he inquired whether it might not be an amphibian.
In 1809 this specimen came into Cuvier’s hands, who at once perceived that it belonged to a reptile that could fly, and it was he who proposed the name Pterodactyl. Until the oracle at Paris was consulted, the greatest uncertainty prevailed, one naturalist regarding it as a bird, another as a bat. Cuvier, with his penetrating eye and patient investigation, combated these theories, supported though they were by weighty authorities. The principal key by means of which he solved the problem, and detected the saurian relationship of the Pterodactyl, seems to have been a certain bone belonging to the skull, known as the quadrate bone. In his great work, Ossemens Fossiles, he says, "Behold an animal which, in its osteology, from its teeth to the end of its claws, offers all the characters of the saurians.... But it was, at the same time, an animal provided with the means of flight—which, when stationary, could not have made much use of its anterior extremities, even if it did not keep them always folded as birds keep their wings, which nevertheless might use its small anterior fingers to suspend itself from the branches of trees, but when at rest must have been ordinarily on its hind feet, like the birds again; and also, like them, must have carried its neck sub-erect and curved backwards, so that its enormous head should not interrupt its equilibrium."
Pterodactylus macronyx, or, as it is now called, Dimorphodon macronyx ([Fig. 32]), was about the size of a raven. It was discovered in 1828 by the late Miss Mary Anning, the well-known collector of fossils from the Liassic rocks that form the cliffs alone: the coast of Dorsetshire, near Lyme-Regis. This important specimen was figured and described by Dr. Buckland, in the Transactions of the Geological Society. He suggested the specific name macronyx on account of the great length of the claws.
