No remains of
Serpents (_Ophidians_) have as yet been detected in the Jurassic;
but strata of this age have yielded the remains of numerous
_Crocodilians_, which probably inhabited the sea. The most important
member of this group is _Teleosaurus_, which attained a length of
over thirty feet, and is in some respects allied to the living
Gavials of India.
[Illustration: Fig. 181.--_Archoeopteryx macrura_, showing tail
and tail-feathers, with detached bones. Reduced. From the
Lithographic Slate of Solenhofen.]
[Illustration: Fig. 182.--Restoration of _Archoeopteryx macrura_.
(After Owen.)]
The great class of the Birds, as we have seen, is represented
in rocks earlier than the Oolites simply by the not absolutely
certain evidence of the three-toed footprints of the Connecticut
Trias. In the Lithographic Slate of Solenhofen (Middle Oolite),
there has been discovered, however, the at present unique skeleton
of a Bird well known under the name of the _Archoeopteryx macrura_
(figs. 181, 182). The only known specimen--now in the British
Museum--unfortunately does not exhibit the skull; but the
fine-grained matrix has preserved a number of the other bones
of the skeleton, along with the impressions of the tail and wing
feathers. From these remains we know that _Archoeopteryx_ differed
in some remarkable peculiarities of its structure from all existing
members of the class of Birds.
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