Dragons of the Air: An Account of Extinct Flying ReptilesSeeley, H. G. (Harry Govier)
Science
Dragons of the Air: An Account of Extinct Flying Reptiles
Seeley, H. G. (Harry Govier)
Pterosauria
Within my own memory Pterodactyle remains were equally rare from the
Cambridge Greensand. The late Professor Owen in one of his public
lectures produced the first few fragments received from Cambridge, and
with a knowledge which in its scientific method seemed to border on the
power of creation, produced again the missing parts, so that the bones
told their story, which the work of waves and mineral changes in the
rock had partly obliterated. Subsequently good fortune gave me the
opportunity during ten years to help my University in the acquisition
and arrangement of the finest collection of remains of these animals in
Europe. Out of an area of a few acres, during a year or two, came the
thousand bones of Ornithosaurs, mostly associated sets of remains, each
a part of a separate skeleton, described in my published catalogues, as
well as the best of those at York and in the British Museum and other
collections in London.
The deposit which yields them, named Cambridge Greensand, may or may not
represent a long period of time in its single foot of thickness; but the
abundance of fossils, obtained whenever the workmen were adequately
remunerated for preserving them, would suggest that the Pterodactyles
might have lived like sea-birds or in colonies like the Penguins, if it
were not that the number of examples of each species found is always
small, and the many variations of structure suggested rather that the
individuals represent the life of many lands. The collections of remains
are mostly from villages in the immediate vicinity of Cambridge, such as
Chesterton, Huntingdon Road, Coldham Common, Haslingfield, Barton,
Shillington, Ditton, Granchester, Harston, Barrington, stretching south
to Ashwell in Bedfordshire on the one hand, as well as further north by
Horningsea into the fens. Each appears to be the associated bones of a
single individual. The remains mostly belong to comparatively large
animals. Some were small, though none have been found so diminutive as
the smallest from the Solenhofen Slate. The largest specimens with long
jaws appear to have had the head measuring not more than eighteen inches
in length, which is less than half the size of the great toothless
Pterodactyles from Kansas.
[Illustration: FIG. 69. RESTORATION OF THE SKULL OF ORNITHOCHEIRUS
The parts left white are in the Geological Museum at Cambridge. The
shaded parts have not been found. The two holes are the eye and the
nostril (From the Cambridge Greensand)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account