Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/471

Rh The last and most striking of these novelties is 'the feathered fossil' from the lithographic stone of SolonhofenSolenhofen [sic]. Until the year 1858, no well-determined skeleton of a bird had been detected in any rocks older than the tertiary. In that year, Mr. Lucas Barrett found in the upper greensand of the cretaceous series, near Cambridge, the femur, tibia, and some other bones of a swimming bird, supposed by him to be of the gull tribe. His opinion as to the ornithic character of the remains was afterwards confirmed by Professor Owen.

The Archæopteryx macrurus, Owen, recently acquired by the British Museum, affords a second example of the discovery of the osseous remains of a bird in strata older than the Eocene. It was found in the great quarries of lithographic limestone at Pappenheim, near Solenhofen in Bavaria, the rock being a member of the Upper Oolite.

It was at first conjectured in Germany, before any experienced osteologist had had an opportunity of inspecting the original specimen, that this fossil might be a feathered pterodactyl, (flying reptiles having been often met with in the same stratum,) or that it might at least supply some connecting links between a reptile and a bird. But Professor Owen, in a memoir lately read to the Royal Society, (November 20, 1862,) has shown that it is unequivocally a bird, and that such of its characters as are abnormal are by no means strikingly reptilian. The skeleton was lying on its back when embedded in calcareous sediment, so that the ventral part is exposed to view. It is about one foot eight inches long, and one foot four across, from the apex of the right to that of the left wing. The furculum, or merry-thought, which is entire, marks the fore part of the trunk; the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg bones are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers