The strange structure of this animal gave rise to most contradictory opinions from the earlier naturalists. One supposed it to be a bird, another a bat, and others a flying reptile. Cuvier was the first to detect the truth, and to prove, from its organisation, that the animal was a Saurian. “Behold,” he says, “an animal which in its osteology, from its teeth to the end of its claws, presents all the characters of the Saurians; nor can we doubt that their characteristics existed in its integuments and softer parts, in its scales, its circulation, its generative organs: it was at the same time provided with the means of flight; but when stationary it could not have made much use of its anterior extremities, even if it did not keep them always folded as birds fold their wings. It might, it is true, use its small anterior fingers to suspend itself from the branches of trees; but when at rest it must have been generally on its hind feet, like the birds again, and like them it must have carried its neck half-erect and curved backwards, so that its enormous head should not disturb its equilibrium.” This diversity of opinion need not very much surprise us after all, for, with the body and tail of an ordinary mammal, it had the form of a bird in its head and the length of its neck, of the bat in the structure and proportion of its wings, and of a reptile in the smallness of its head and in its beak, armed with at least sixty equal sharp-pointed teeth, differing little in form and size. Dr. Buckland describes eight distinct species, varying in size from a snipe to a cormorant. Of these, _P. crassirostris_ (Fig. 105) and _P. brevirostris_ (Fig. 106), were both discovered in the Lias of Solenhofen. _P. macronyx_ belongs to the Lias of Lyme Regis.