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 CambridgeSeeley, H. G. (Harry Govier)
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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
Seeley, H. G. (Harry Govier)
Pterosauria
For the convenience of students the Catalogue is made in parts. The
Syndics of the University Press printed last autumn as an example of
the "Indexes to the Museum," an Index to the Pterodactyles, Birds,
and Reptiles from the Secondary Strata. And this memoir is an example
of the second kind of Catalogue, which explains the structures of the
Pterodactyles of the Cambridge Greensand. In its progress questions
have arisen which necessitated an examination both of the method, of
research in comparative anatomy and of its results in classification.
And in so far as the views here advanced differ from those commonly
taught, the discrepancy is due to the writer's imperfect faith in the
results of the inductive method of research, as commonly used by modern
writers on Palæontology. It has not been consistent with the plan of
this little work to do more than scatter through it a few hints upon
method, a subject which will more fitly be discussed with a part of the
Catalogue which forms a synopsis of the osteology of the fossil animals
usually named Reptiles. The views here urged have however but little
of novelty. The name Ornithosauria was proposed by the distinguished
naturalist Prince Charles Bonaparte in 1838. The group as an order was
recognized by Von Meyer in 1830. The affinities of the brain appear
to have been detected by Oken, and the bird-like character of the
respiratory system was expounded by Von Meyer. And most of whatever
this memoir contains has been already thought or discovered by the
German philosophers, who have had the Pterodactyles as fossils of their
fatherland, though my own conclusions were arrived at separately and
from different materials.
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