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 articular surface looks upward and forward, in which aspect it has
a trapezoidal form. Sometimes, as in No. 2, the great sigmoid area is
divided into two parts by a vertical ridge, the more elevated part
of the articulation on the radial side of the bone being concave,
while the outer part, as in the heron, besides being concave, has its
border on the concave side of the bone produced and rounded. There is
a small triangular elevation on the radial aspect of the proximal end
like that on the corresponding part of the ulna of the heron. On this
aspect the bone is flattened, on the opposite and outward aspect it is
compressed and produced as in the bird. No. 2 measures 1-1/8 inch over
the articular end. The series includes 6 specimens.
IV. Proximal End of Radius.
This bone terminated in an epiphysis which formed part of the articular
surface, and has disappeared from all the 7 specimens mounted. So much
of the articulation as remains does not oppose the idea of its having
been attached to the humerus, while the large size of the example No.
7, which could not have measured less than 2-1/2 inches from side to
side over the articulation, is more in accordance with what is at
present known of the dimensions attained by the distal end of the
humerus than with the size that would be expected in the distal end
of the tibia, which is the only other unknown bone to which these
specimens could be referred.
The longest specimen, No. 3, is 3 inches long; broadly ovate at the
fracture, measuring in the long diameter 1 inch, and in the short
diameter more than 3/4ths of an inch. Nearer the articular end the bone
becomes in section sub-quadrate or rather sub-rhomboid. No. 1 shows
these terminal characters extremely well. On the posterior aspect of
the specimen the surface is divided into two flattened slightly convex
parts by a median vertical well-rounded angular bend. In front the side
is similarly divided into two parts, both of them a little concave
proximally, by a sharp median vertical ridge, which does not reach to
the articulation by a varying distance, never so long as the bone is
wide. The ridge terminates in, and is pierced by, a vertical groove
apparently for a nutritive vessel. Where the anterior and posterior
aspects of the bone converge laterally the sides are well rounded.
Only a small part of the articular surface is preserved, looking upward
and a little forward; it terminates the wider of the halves of the
bone laterally and in front. The remainder of the articular surface,
from which the epiphysis has come away, may be divided principally in
the majority of specimens into a posterior flattened median rhomboid
space and an oblong cup-shaped anterior space divided from it by an
elevated ridge. The extreme lateral termination appears to have been a
ball-shaped convexity.
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