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
Prof. Owen has figured the shaft of a fine example of this bone in
Dixon's Geology of Sussex, Pl. XXXIX. fig. 11. A good proximal end is
shown in Pl. XXXII. fig. 2, of Prof. Owen's monograph of the Cretaceous
Reptilia, but the figure appears to have been previously given in Pl.
XXIV. fig. 2 of the same monograph. By far the grandest specimens are
drawn in Pl. XXX. Prof. Owen names these wing bones. In the "Literature
of English Pterodactyles" the loss of the proximal epiphysis from the
specimen represented in Prof Owen's fig. 1 and 2 led me to interpret
the bone as an ulna. Figs. 1 to 4 represent the proximal ends and
greater portions of the shafts of first phalanges. The lower bone
in fig. 5 is neither radius nor ulna, as stated in the text of the
Cretaceous Reptilia, but the shaft and distal end of a first phalange;
the upper bone being the second phalange.
The Proximal End.
The straight shaft throughout its length is triangular in section. One
side of the bone is gently convex; this may be named for convenience
the outside. The two parts which make up the other side are inclined,
and have the angle in which they meet rounded; one part looks upward
and inward, the other downward and inward. Towards the proximal end the
bone widens and thickens, and the moiety of the inner side which is
away from the heel becomes cleft, and has the sides of the depression
rounded to form a large pneumatic foramen. The articular surface looks
upward and a little outward on the side of the pneumatic foramen.
It consists of two semicircular concave grooves, separated by an
intervening low convexity. The outer of these grooves extends from the
margin of the extreme proximal point of the heel to the widest point
of the bone; the other groove more deeply concave, is a third shorter,
extending from inside the pneumatic foramen to the heel. Here both
grooves converge, terminating in a point, exterior to which a little
distally is a hemispherical mammilate eminence. On the distal side of
the eminence there is a depression so as to make the angle behind the
heel almost hemispherically rounded. This articulation fits on to the
distal articulation of the wing-metacarpal.
When the proximal epiphysis forming the heel comes away, it leaves a
large sub-circular pit with a depressed narrow border.
Distal End.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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