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
[Footnote U: For the opportunity of making this description, I am
indebted to the kindness of John Francis Walker, Esq., M.A., F.G.S.,
F.C.S., &c., who some time since forwarded to me the whole of his rarer
Ornithosaurian remains for description in the Geological Magazine,]
The original specimen is in the collection of J. F. Walker, Esq., of
Sidney Sussex College. When found it only displayed the front of the
cerebral hemispheres, and Mr. Walker generously gave me permission to
remove the investing cancellous bone and phosphate of lime, and thus
exhibit the form of the cerebrum and its relations to the cerebellum.
The lower part of the brain is not preserved. But adherent to the sides
of the fossil are still left parts of the temporal bones, and part of
the bone at the back of the orbit which closes in the brain. The form
of the cerebellum is not quite perfect behind, but it must have been
unusually small.
The cerebral lobes taken together are much wider from side to side than
from back to front, and have a transverse elliptical outline, except
for the mesial notch behind for the cerebellum. The lobes are a little
flattened above, and divided from each other by a deep mesial groove,
which makes each lobe convex from side to side. They are well rounded
at the front and at the sides, and are a little compressed towards each
other below in the region of the orbits. Behind they become covered
superiorly as in birds with a greatly thickened part of the squamosal
and parietal bones. The surface of the cerebrum is smooth. There is
no indication of a pineal gland. The cerebellum is small, like a pea
between two filberts. It is sub-hemisphercal, is placed close against
the cerebrum, and appears to give off narrow lateral parts, like
those seen in many birds, only that they abut against the back of the
cerebral lobes as in the Hare and some Mammals. In no reptile is there
a brain in which the cerebrum embraces the front of the cerebellum,
or in which it attains to such an enormous size. Fœtal Mammals (_e.
g._ the horse and the sheep), even when they have attained to a
considerable bulk, and many adult mammals, still have the optic lobes
dividing the cerebrum from the cerebellum as in Reptiles.
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