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
There is a pair of bones which extend forward from these inner articular
borders of the quadrate bones, and converge in a long #V#-shape till
they merge in the hard palate formed by the bones of the front of the
beak, named intermaxillary and maxillary bones. The limits of the bones
of the palate are not distinct, but there can be no doubt that the
front of the #V# is the bone named vomer, that the palatine bones are at
its sides, and that its hinder parts are the pterygoid bones as in
birds. There is a long, wide, four-sided, open space in the middle of
the palate, between the vomer and the basi-sphenoid bone, unlike
anything in birds or other animals.
Professor Marsh, in a figure of the palate in the great skull of the
toothless Pterodactyle named Ornithostoma (Pteranodon), from the Chalk
of Kansas, found a large oval vacuity in this region of the palate. In
that genus the pterygoid bones meet each other between the quadrate
bones as in Dicynodon (Fig. 73, p. 182). Hence the great palatal vacuity
here seen in the Ornithosaur is paralleled by the small vacuity in the
South African reptile, which is sometimes distinct and sometimes partly
separated from the anterior part of the vacuity which forms the openings
of the nostrils on the palate.
The Solenhofen skulls which give any evidence of the palate are exposed
in side view only, and the bones, imperfectly seen through the lateral
vacuities, are displaced by crushing. They include long strips like the
vomerine bones in the Lias fossil, and they diverge in the same way as
they extend back to the quadrate bones. The oblique division into vomer
in front and pterygoid bone behind is shown by Goldfuss in his original
figure of Scaphognathus. Thus there is some reason for believing that
all Ornithosaurs have the palate formed upon the same general plan,
which is on the whole peculiar to the group, especially in not having
the palatal openings of the nares divided in the middle line. It would
appear probable that the short-tailed animals have the pterygoid bones
meeting in the middle line and triangular; and that they are slender
rods entirely separate from each other in the long-tailed genera.
THE TEETH
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