With
regard to its habits and mode of life, Professor Phillips remarks
that, "gifted with ample means of flight, able at least to perch
on rocks and scuffle along the shore, perhaps competent to dive,
though not so well as a Palmiped bird, many fishes must have
yielded to the cruel beak and sharp teeth of Rhamphorhynchus.
If we ask to which of the many families of Birds the analogy of
structure and probable way of life would lead us to assimilate
Rhamphorhynchus, the answer must point to the swimming races with
long wings, clawed feet, hooked beak, and habits or violence and
voracity; and for preference, the shortness of the legs, and other
circumstances, may be held to claim for the Stonesfield fossil a
more than fanciful similitude to the groups of Cormorants, and
other marine divers, which constitute an effective part of the
picturesque army of robbers of the sea."
Another extraordinary and interesting group of the Mesozoic Reptiles
is constituted by the _Deinosauria_, comprising a series of mostly
gigantic forms, which range from the Trias to the Chalk. All the
"Deinosaurs" are possessed of the two pairs of limbs proper to
Vertebrate animals, and these organs are in the main adapted for
walking on the dry land. Thus, whilst the Mesozoic seas swarmed
with the huge Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs, and whilst the air
was tenanted by the Dragon-like Pterosaurs, the land-surfaces of
the Secondary period were peopled by numerous forms of Deinosaurs,
some of them of even more gigantic dimensions than their marine
brethren.
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