Archaeopteryx

“ In the wing itself the main interest centers in the manus and its free metacarpals. In form and position these three bones are just what may be seen in some young birds of to-day. This is an important point, as it has been claimed that the hand of Archæopteryx is not at all avian, but reptilian. The bones of the reptile are indeed there, but they have already received the stamp of the bird. ”

“ Other fossils, lying as yet unknown in the strata of our earth and waiting for the ardent scientific digger, will teach us considerably more about the evolution of the birds, but the outlines of it are already mapped out by what we possess at present; and it must be said, especially about the Archæopteryx, that it sheds more light upon the development of the animal kingdom during former periods than perhaps any other known fossil. ”

“ Professor Owen therefore considers the tail of the Archaeopteryx as exemplifying the persistency of what is now an embryonic character. The tail, he remarks, is essentially a variable organ; there are long-tailed bats and short-tailed bats, long-tailed rodents and short-tailed rodents, long-tailed pterodactyls and short-tailed pterodactyls.
The Archaeopteryx differs from all known birds, not only in the structure of its tail, but in having two, if not three, digits in the hand ”

“ The caudal vertebrae are fused into a flattened bone, the pygostyle, to support the tail feathers. In the fossil bird Archaeopteryx the centra are amphicoelous and the long tail has separate caudal vertebrae. The ribs are few and consist of dorsal (vertebral) and ventral (sternal) parts; the former almost always have uncinate processes. Free cervical ribs are often present and Archaeopteryx possessed abdominal ribs. The sternum is very large and in flying birds (Carinatae) has a median keel (carina) projecting from it, while the non-flying, ostrich-like birds (Ratitae) have no such structure. ”

“ It only serves to make the matter less intelligible, that there are found in Secondary strata some few relics of birds with decidedly saurian characteristics, [198] as the Hesperornis and Ichthyornis in the Chalk, and the Archæopteryx, most ancient of fowls, lower still, in the Oolite. All these creatures have lizard-like heads and teeth; the Archæopteryx in addition has decidedly reptilian characters connected with its wings and tail. But none of them throw the slightest light upon the point we are now considering.{172} In the case of all, the problem of flight has been completely solved. ”

“ For the old Bird Archæopteryx has three such clawed digits, but no wing finger. And some Dinosaurs also have the hand with three digits terminating in claws, which are quite comparable to the clawed digits of Pterodactyles.
The truth expressed in the saying that no man by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature is of universal application in the animal world, in relation to the result upon the skeleton of the exercise of a function by the individual. ”

“ He asserts, in regard to Archæopteryx, the instance which is always put forward as the intermediate link in the evolution of birds, that it does not show in any of its characters a fundamental difference from any of the birds of to-day, and further, that, through convergent development under similar influences, similar organs and structural relations result, iterative arrangements which come about quite independently of descent. He maintains, too, that the principle of the struggle for existence is rather disproved than corroborated by the palæontological record. ”

“ Even birds, the most apparently isolated of all living forms, and the most rarely preserved in a fossil state, have been shown to possess undoubted affinities with reptiles; and in the Oolitic Archæopteryx, with its lengthened tail, feathered on each side, we have one of the connecting links from the side of birds; while Professor Huxley has recently shown that the entire order of Dinosaurians have remarkable affinities to birds, and that one of them, the Compsognathus, makes a nearer approach to bird organisation than does Archæopteryx to that of reptiles. ”

“ It is idle to speculate on the habits of this earliest of known birds. That it could fly is certain, and the feet show it to have been well adapted to arboreal life. The clawed slender fingers did not make Archaeopteryx any more quadrupedal or bat-like in its habits than is a kestrel hawk, with its equally large, or even larger thumb-claw. ”

“ One of the most interesting points determined during my investigation of Archæopteryx was the separate condition of the pelvic bones. In all other known adult birds, recent and extinct, the three pelvic elements, ilium, ischium, and pubis, are firmly anchylosed. In young birds these bones are separate, and in all known Dinosaurian reptiles they are also distinct. ”

“ Hodge and Duffield at Princeton, were showing that if evolution be true the biblical accounts must be false, the indefatigable Yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and among them Hesperornis and Ichthyornis with teeth. While in Germany Luthardt, Schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture requires a belief in special and separate creations, the Archaeopteryx, showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was discovered. ”

“ This proved the existence of a bird during the Jurassic period—that is, of a feathered animal much older than all other known fossil birds. It was therefore named Archæopteryx, which means "old wing." The feather was there; a sharp lookout was kept now for the bird itself, and, indeed, one year later, a nearly complete skeleton of it was found. ”

“ Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous the remains of birds are far less common than those of flying reptiles, and strata representing hundreds of thousands of years intervene between Archaeopteryx and the next birds of which we know, whose skeletons occur in the Cretaceous beds of western Kansas. ”

“ The Saururae have the metacarpals well developed and not ancylosed, and the caudal vertebrae are numerous and large, so that the caudal region of the spine is longer than the body. The furcula is complete and strong, the feet very passerine in appearance. The skull and sternum were at the time unknown, and indeed the whole order, without doubt entirely extinct, rested exclusively on the celebrated fossil, then unique, Archaeopteryx. ”

“ Occupying the ground midway between the reptile and the bird, having the characteristics of both—the link between the four-legged animal and the feathered songster of the air—the Archaeopteryx, as this ancient bird is called, was about the size of a crow.
Another line of development led from the reptiles to the mammals—the hair-clothed creatures that suckle their young. This was the most promising line of Nature’s advance, for at the end of this line, man was destined to appear. ”

“ It is amphicoelous, or biconcave, when each end is hollowed, as in the dorsal region of Ichthyornis and probably in Archaeopteryx; procoelous, when concave in front (as is common in Reptiles) ; opisthocoelous when concave behind (as in many Mammals) .
2. The Ribs are doubly attached to the vertebrae by a head (capitulum) and a knob (tuberculum) ; and have a neck, a dorsal, and a ventral portion, each dorsal section (save on the last rib) possessing an "uncinate process" or thin, bony posterior projection, except in Archaeopteryx and the Palamedeidae. ”

“ Birds are comparatively rare as fossils and we should therefore look in vain among them for any such long and closely knit series as the mammals display in abundance. Nevertheless, a few extremely fortunate discoveries have made it practically certain that birds are descended from reptiles, of which they represent a highly specialised branch. The most ancient representative of this class is the extraordinary genus Archaeopteryx from the upper Jurassic of Bavaria, which, though an unmistakable bird, retains so many reptilian structures and characteristics as to make its derivation plain. ”

“ Nor is the class of birds as now limited confined to the single order of which only we have living representatives. In fossil forms we have, if the differences assumed be confirmed, types of two distinct orders, one being represented by the genus Archæopteryx and another by the genera Ichthyornis and Apatornis of Marsh. ”

“ These, too, are often notched, serrated, lobed or "festooned," or emarginate (slightly indented) ; the curious transverse serrations or lamellae of the beak in Anseres, and the somewhat similar sifting apparatus in Phoenicopterus, Prion and Anastomus being especially remarkable. Teeth were probably lost by Birds before Tertiary times, but were possessed at least by Archaeopteryx, Hesperornis and Ichthyornis. The so-called "egg-tooth" of embryos is merely a calcareous protuberance on the upper surface of the bill, which is cast after being used to crack the shell. ”

“ As we know comparatively little of the terrestrial reptiles of the triassic or preceding period of the mesozoic age, and very little of its bird-like forms beyond that afforded by the footprints in the Connecticut valley, it is expected by naturalists friendly to the doctrine of evolution that future researches will reveal birds more reptilian than the archæopteryx, and bird-like reptiles, which will go far toward filling the gap which now exists between reptiles and birds. ”

“ It is an anomaly that birds should all be toothless. And so, without citing the supposed teeth of Archæopteryx, it may « 9 » be affirmed that it would be no more remarkable for some birds to have teeth than it is for some mammals and reptiles to be without them. ”

“ Between these museums a grand Museum of Natural History is to be built. The university has excellent collections in geology in charge of Professor Beyrieh, and in paleontology under the care of Professor Dames. Among them may be seen the second specimen of the archæopteryx, which cost three thousand dollars. It has the advantage over the specimen in the British Museum of possessing a head, and of showing its fore-limbs, the fingers of which are not united as in existing birds. ”

“ It is not unlike the pelvis of a Monotreme, but the ilium is more Avian. It resembles the pelvis of Dicynodon. And the discovery of a long-tailed bird-like the Archæopteryx shows that the tail is like that of old birds, even if it also presents some analogy in form to that of certain reptiles and mammals.
(4) "Il n'y auroit pas eu de dents au bec; les dents des harles ne tiennent qu'à l'enveloppe cornée, et non à la charpente osseuse." This is not a reptilian character. Among reptiles some tribes have teeth, others want them ”

“ The importance of Archaeopteryx justifies the following descriptive detail. Vertebral column composed of about 50 vertebrae, viz. 10-11 cervical, 12-11 thoracic, 2 lumbar, 5-6 sacral, and 20 or 21 caudal, with a total caudal length of the Berlin specimen of 7 in. The cervical and thoracic vertebrae seem to be biconcave; the cervical ribs are much reduced and were apparently still movable; the thoracic ribs are devoid of uncinate processes. Paired abdominal ribs are doubtful. Scarcely anything is known of the sternum, and little of the shoulder-girdle, except the very stout furcula ”

“ An examination of the skeleton, however, offers us only three orders, the first of which, possessing a long bony tail, is represented by a single genus, the extinct Archeopteryx; the second, in which the breast-bone is furnished with a ridge or keel, whence the name Carinata, includes ordinary birds; the third order has no keel on its breast-bone, and is represented by the Ostrich, Emeu, etc. ”

“ He considers that these ancient fossils may be classified with the existing Orders of Insects, though they cannot be placed in existing families; and he assigns the palaeozoic fossil Insects at present known, to the Orders Neuroptera and Orthoptera, and to the homopterous division of Hemiptera. The greater part of the species he looks on as Neuroptera, and places in six families—Megasecopterides, Protephemerides, Platypterides, Stenodictyopterides, Protodonates, and Protoperlides. ”

“ Remains of Pteropodidae belonging to existing genera occur in the caves of tropical countries in the eastern hemisphere; and the skeleton of an extinct generic type, Archaeopteropus, has been obtained from the Miocene lignite of Italy, which indicates a form to a certain extent transitional in character between typical fruit-bats and the insectivorous bats. The tail, for instance, which in most modern fruit-bats is rudimentary, with only three or four vertebrae, in the fossil has eight complete vertebrae ”

“ In the extinct pterodactyles—which were truly flying reptiles—we meet with an approximation to the structure of the bat, but in the pterodactyle we have only one finger elongated in each hand: a striking example of how the very same function may be provided for by a modification similar in principle, yet surely manifesting the independence of its origin. When we go to lower animals, we find flight produced by organs, as the wings of insects, which are not even modified limbs at all ”

“ Von Meyer also enriched the literature of fossil reptiles, discussing exhaustively those occurring in Germany, while Huxley’s classic work on the crocodiles as well as on dinosaurs, and the labors of Buckland, Fraas, Koken, Von Huene, Gaudry, Hulke, Seeley, and Lydekker have added immensely to our knowledge of the group.
Of the birds, which at best are rare as fossils, our knowledge, especially of the huge flightless moas, is due largely again to Owen, and his realization of the systematic position of Archœopteryx has already been mentioned. ”