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Updated: June 20, 2025
Among Vertebrates there is no ordinally distinct fossil fish: there is only one extinct order of Amphibia the Labyrinthodonts; but there are at least four distinct orders of Reptilia, viz. the Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, Pterosauria, Dinosauria, and perhaps another or two.
Finally, if it was something different from either, how did the carinate birds and pterodactyles take on independently one special common structure when disagreeing in so many; while the struthious birds, agreeing in many points with the Dinosauria, agree yet more with the carinate birds? Indeed by no arrangement of branches from a stem can the difficulty be evaded.
Nevertheless, the view has been put forward and ably maintained by the same Professor, as also by Professor Cope in the United States, that the line of descent from reptiles to birds has not been from ordinary reptiles, through pterodactyle-like forms, to ordinary birds, but to the struthious ones from certain extinct reptiles termed Dinosauria; one of the most familiarly known of which is the Iguanodon of the Wealden formation.
Thus a difficulty presents itself as to the explanation of the three following relationships: That of the Pterodactyles with carinate birds; that of the Dinosauria with struthious birds; that of the carinate and struthious birds with each other.
It has been suggested to me that this difficulty may be evaded by considering pterodactyles and carinate birds as independent branches from one side of an ancient common trunk, while similarly the Dinosauria and struthious birds are taken to be independent branches from the other side of the same common trunk; the two kinds of birds resembling each other so much on account of their later development from that trunk as compared with the development of the reptilian forms.
Moreover, if the remarkable and minute similarity of the coracoid of a pterodactyle to that of a bird be merely the result of function and no sign of genetic affinity, it is not inconceivable that pelvic and leg resemblances of Dinosauria to birds may be functional likewise, though such an explanation is, of course, by no means necessary to support the view maintained in this book.
"This settler, I might add, came to your province some three million years ago and is now being exhumed from one of the cut-banks of the Red Deer River. He belongs to the Mesozoic order of archisaurian gentlemen known as Dinosauria, and there's about a car-load of him. This interest in one of your cretaceous dinosaur skeletons would imply, of course, that I'm wedded to science.
One of them was sunk from the ship by a heavy weight, and on being drawn up after an hour was quite unharmed. The families of Dinosauria, crocodiles, and Pterosauria or winged reptiles, are also represented in the Lias.
The case does not differ in character from those of the dinosauria and the kangaroos, in both of which instances a release of the arms from duty in walking was followed by a considerable decrease in length and strength, while the legs grew proportionally stronger.
Huxley, T.H., on the structural agreement of man with the apes; on the agreement of the brain in man with that of lower animals; on the adult age of the orang; on the embryonic development of man; on the origin of man; on variation in the skulls of the natives of Australia; on the abductor of the fifth metatarsal in apes; on the nature of the reasoning power; on the position of man; on the suborders of primates; on the Lemuridae; on the Dinosauria; on the amphibian affinities of the Ichthyosaurians; on variability of the skull in certain races of man; on the races of man; Supplement on the brain.
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