Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.12340

    ‘Pterodactyls’

    Date
    1862
    Creator
    After
    Henry Woodward (1832 - 1921, British) , Palaeontologist
    Object type
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 135mm
    width (print): 212mm
    Subject
    Earth Sciences
       > Palaeontology
          > Fossils
    Content object
    nature
       > fossil
    Description
    Studies of two fossil specimens of ancient flying lizards with a reconstruction. Figure 1. Ornithocephalus brevirostris [juvenile pterosaur] here termed P.brevirostris discovered in 1817 and shown at its natural size. Figure 2. Rhamphorhynchus gemmingii from a specimen discovered in 1854. Figure 3. Reconstructed pterodactyl as it might have appeared in flight.

    Plate accompanying the paper ‘The flying lizards of the secondary rocks’, by Henry Woodward, The Intellectual Observer, January 1863, pp.443-451. Inscribed below: ‘PTERODACTYLES, FROM THE LITHOGRAPHIC LIMESTONE. H.W. del.’

    The accompanying text states that: ‘Thirty-seven species of flying lizards are known and described; how many individuals have been discovered it is impossible to say. There is every reason, however, to believe from the frequent occurrence of their remains, that they were very abundant…the Pterodactyles [occupied the place of] bats, and partially of birds, thus realizing Dr. Mantell’s vision of an “Age of Reptiles”’.

    Henry Woodward (1832-1921) British geologist and palaeontologist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1873.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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