XI.—On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias at Lyme Regis.

Abstract

In the same blue lias formation at Lyme Regis, in which so many specimens of Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus have been discovered by Miss Mary Anning, she has recently found the skeleton of an unknown species of that most rare and curious of all reptiles, the Pterodactyle, an extinct genus, which has yet been recognized only in the upper Jura limestone beds of Aichstedt and Solenhofen, in the lithographic stone, which is nearly coeval with the chalk of England. The history of the only two perfect specimens that have yet been found of this most anomalous genus of extinct reptiles, is familiar to all geologists from the minute and detailed descriptions which Cuvier has given of them: and the Pterodactylus longirostris and Pterodactylus brevirostris are pronounced by him to be incontestably the most extraordinary of all the extinct animals which have come under his consideration; and such as, if we saw them restored to life, would appear most strange and most dissimilar to any thing that now exists. “ Ce sont de tous les etres dont ce livre nous revele l’ancienne existence, les plus extraordinaires, et ceux qui, si on les voyait vivans, paroitroient les plus etrangers a toute la nature actuelle*.” In size and general form and in the disposition and character of its wings, this fossil genus, according to Cuvier, somewhat resembled our modern bats and vampyres, but had its beak elongated like the bill of a woodcock, and armed with teeth like the snout of a crocodile; its