Ichthyosauri have been discovered. Lyme Regis is the most celebrated locality in England, but the remains of numerous species of both genera have been discovered in many places in this country and on the Continent, in the Oolite and Lias. The British species of the Enaliosauri known and described by Professor Owen, amount to about twelve of the Ichthyosaurus, and nearly twenty of the Plesiosaurus.* A group of Reptiles, nearly related to the Enaliosaurians, but distinguished (under the name of Simosauri) chiefly by osteological peculiarities of the skull, are found in the Muschelkalk and other strata of the Trias in Germany. Of these there are about eight species, belonging to the genera Nothosaurus, Pistosaurus, Conchiosaurus, and Simosaurus, which have been described by Hermann von Meyer. 29. PTERODACTYLES, or FLYING REPTILES.t-In this rapid sketch, it will not be necessary to dwell on the first appearance and subsequent great development of the Lacertian tribes through the periods embraced in this retrospective view, as we have already noticed at considerable length the principal extinct Saurians, whose remains have been disinterred from the secondary rocks. I pass, therefore, to the Pterosaurians, or Flying-lizards, of the ancient world, which unquestionably present the most extraordinary modification of reptilian organization which the researches of the palæontologist have brought to light. With a head and length of neck resembling those of a bird, the wings of a bat, and the body and tail of an ordinary mammal, these creatures present an anomaly of structure as unlike their fossil contemporaries as is the duck-billed Platypus or Ornithorhyncus of Australia to existing animals. The skull is small, with a long beak, furnished sometimes with upwards of sixty sharp-pointed teeth; the size of the orbit denotes a * British Assoc. Reports for 1839, p. 126; and Monog. Cret. Rept. 1851 + Pterodactylus, i. e. Wing-finger.-See Medals of Creation, p. 723. large eye, and it is therefore probable that the smaller spe cies, like other Insectivora, were nocturnal. The outer or LIGN. 137.-SKELETON OF A FLYING REPTILE: FROM SOLENHOFEN. little finger is immensely elongated for the support of a membraneous expansion, similar to that which is extended on the fingers of the Bat; impressions of this membrane are seen in some specimens (Lign. 137). The fingers terminate in long hooks, like the curved claw of the Bat. The size and form of the foot, leg, and thigh show that the Pterodactyles were capable of perching on trees, and of standing firmly on the ground, where, with their wings folded, they might walk or hop like a bird.* * See Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise. Mr. Martin has intro Twenty species of these extraordinary creatures have been discovered, varying in size from that of a Snipe to that of a Cormorant or an Albatross. Of these, twelve have been found in the lithographic stone of Bavaria,* where the bones of Pterodactyles are associated with the remains of Dragonflies; in the Stonesfield Slate they are collocated with the elytra, or wing-cases, of beetles. In the Lias, the remains of a species of the size of a Raven were discovered by Miss Anning. This species and three of those from Bavaria do not belong to the Pterodactyle proper; but, having no teeth, and being distinguished by their long stiff tail, they are separated by Von Meyer, under the name of Ramphorhyncus (Beak-nose). Numerous thin delicate bones, evidently belonging to Pterodactyles, have been found in the Wealden, and prove that some species of these extraordinary creatures inhabited the country of the Iguanodon. In the Chalk of Kent, the upper and lower jaw-bones with teeth, portions of a coracoid bone, several digital bones, and parts of the arm-bones of large Pterodactyles, have been obtained. From a comparison of these relics with the specimen of P. crassirostris (Lign. 137), the Kentish species appear to have been much larger, and it is estimated that the expanded wings of P. Cuvieri would be, at least, eighteen feet wide; whilst in another Chalk species the extent of the wings from tip to tip was fifteen feet. Among existing reptiles, the diminutive Draco volans is the only known species capable of flight. duced a restored figure of a Pterodactyle in the foreground of the Frontispiece of Vol. I. of this work. Goldfuss, Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Cur. vol. xv. p. 63. This memoir, by the great German palæontologist, is illustrated by excellent figures of Pterodactyles from Solenhofen. See also Münster's "Beiträge." + Geological Transactions, 2nd Ser., vol. iii. page 220. This un.que specimen is now in the British Museum. The majority of the rare and valuable specimens from the Chalk, by 30. OPHIDIANS (Serpents) and BATRACHIANS (Frog-tribe). -There are no vestiges in the secondary formations of the Ophidians, or reptiles destitute of feet or any extremities for progressive motion; but in the tertiary, bones of a few species of large serpents, chiefly allied to the Boas and Pythons, have been discovered. These fossils were obtained from the Eocene sand, at Kyson, in Suffolk, from the London Clay of the Isle of Sheppey, and the Bracklesham beds on the Hampshire coast.* From the size of the vertebræ, Professor Owen ascertained that some of these Eocene serpents must have exceeded twenty feet in length. "Serpents of such dimensions," he observes, " exist in the present day only in warm or tropical regions; and their food is by no means restricted to animals of the cold-blooded classes. Living birds or quadrupeds constitute the favourite food of the Pythons and Boas, of similar dimensions, which are exhibited in our menageries."+ A large fossil serpent, having some alliances with the Rattle-snake and other venomous Ophidians, has lately been described (under the name of Laophis crotaloides) by Prof. Owen, from evidences afforded by several vertebræ collected near Thessalonica by Captain Spratt. It is probably of the Miocene age. Batrachians.-The reptiles termed Batrachians (from the Greek name for Frog) are characterized by the remarkable metamorphoses which they undergo in the progress of their development from youth to maturity. Their organs of aerial respiration consist of a pair of lungs; but in their young and means of which these gigantic Pterodactyles have been determined, enrich Mr. J. S. Bowerbank's choice collection at Highbury. See Owen's Monograph of the Chalk Reptiles, Palæont. Soc., 1851. Medals of Creation, p. 738. † Geol. Trans. 2nd ser. vol. vi. p. 210. Geol. Journ. vol. xiii. p. 196, pl. 4. aquatic state they are provided with gills, supported on cartilaginous arches, as in fishes. The early existence of colossal reptiles closely allied to this order has already been shown in the Labyrinthodons of the Triassic system (see p. 552). In the tertiary strata, the skeletons, imprints of the footsteps, and even vestiges of the soft parts of several species of Frog, Toad, and Newt, have been found.* In the papierkohle of the Browncoal of the Rhine (see p. 283), several species are met with. In the neighbourhood of Bombay, small batracholites have been found in a black shale, apparently of tertiary date.t But the most celebrated fossil of this class, from the tertiary deposits, is a gigantic Salamander, three feet in length, obtained more than a century since, from the miocene lacustrine limestone of Eningen, in the same quarry which yielded the fossil Fox previously described (see p. 268). The first discovered specimen of this fossil Batrachian (Lign. 138) acquired great celebrity, from an eminent physician of his day, Scheuchzer, having, under some extraordinary delusion, regarded it as a petrified human skeleton, and described it, under the name of "Homo Diluvii Testis et Theoscopos," as being "the moiety, or nearly so, of the skeleton of a man, with the bones and flesh incorporated in the stone, and a relic of that accursed race which was overwhelmed by the Deluge." § Cuvier, when at Haarlem, in 1811, examined this specimen, and ascertained it to be the skeleton of an extinct species of aquatic Salamander; he cleared away the stone and exposed the four legs, and the jaws, beset with teeth. * See Pictet's Paléontologie, 2de edit. vol. i. p. 561. There are + Goldfuss, Nova Acta, vol. xv. part 1, p. 107, pl. 11, 12, and 13. Geol. Journal, vol. iii. p. 224. § Philos. Trans. for 1726, vol. xxxiv. || A full account and illustrations of this fossil are given in the " Ossemens Fossiles," vol. v. p. 431 |