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)
Science
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
The muscular attachments on the front aspect of the coracoid appear to
be two; one large and long inserted into the inner half of the middle
third of the bone, terminating at the proximal end in a tubercle. No
specimen shows the distal end of the insertion. This may indicate a
subdivision of the first pectoral muscle. The other insertion, if it be
distinct, is long and much narrower and at the distal end of the bone.
This, according to the analogy of birds, should be the third pectoral
muscle; if the insertion should be but part of that to which it is
distally adjacent, then the third pectoral muscle must have had an
enormous developement unparalleled in birds.
The distal end of the bone terminates in a synovial articulation
concave transversely, convex from front to back, in form transversely
ovate: the narrow side of the articulation, like the thin edge of the
coracoid, being exterior. The articulation is about three fourths of
the transverse diameter of the distal end; it is at right angles with
the long axis of the bone, and looks downward and a little backward.
The proximal end, massively enlarged outward and backward, presents on
the proximal surface three well defined regions. The largest of these
is an irregular flattened surface half ovate in form, inclined to the
axis of the bone at about 45°, looking backward, and upward also,
when the bone is held vertically; the mesial hindermost half of the
radius of this area is occupied by a pneumatic cavity: to this surface
is applied the scapula. The next largest surface is rectangular and
oblong, looking upward, outward, and a little forward. The transverse
aspect which looks outward being nearly half as long again as the
antero-posterior aspect which looks forward; in the latter direction
the area is slightly concave, in the former direction it is slightly
convex; its posterior boundary is parallel with the front of the bone:
this area forms the anterior moiety of the glenoid cavity, to which the
proximal end of the humerus is applied.
The remaining surface of the proximal end is sub-quadrate, adjoins the
two other surfaces as well as the front and the inside of the shaft, it
is conically concave.
The entire bone when applied to the sternum looked outward, backward
and upward.
Professor Owen remarked (1859) that the "coracoid is shorter and
straighter in birds than in Pterodactyles, but is commonly broader, and
with a longer and stronger anterior process."
The points in which the Pterodactyle coracoid resembles that of
birds (e. g. Gallinaceæ) are the long slender triangular shaft; the
concavo-convex articulation to the sternum; the convexity of the distal
end in front, and its concavity behind; the posterior aspect of its
scapular surface, and the pneumatic foramen.
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