Читать книгу A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains - Gideon Algernon Mantell - Страница 4

[2] Even from this imperfect description (and further anatomical details would be irrelevant in the present work), the ornithologist cannot fail to observe the peculiar characters exhibited by these extremities of the remarkable family of birds, of which the diminutive Apteryx appears to be the only living representative. But the Apteryx differs most essentially in the structure of the cranium and mandibles, from the extinct types to which Professor Owen has given the names of Dinornis, Palapteryx, Aptornis, &c.

With regard to the construction of the feet it may be further remarked, that the length of the inner and outer toes is nearly equal, as in the Cassowary; but the middle toe, which in the Cassowary is one-third longer than the other digits, in the Moa scarcely exceeds in length by one-fifth, the inner and outer toes. The ungueal segments are very large, being equal to one-third the length of the toes. The phalangeals are relatively much shorter than in the Cassowary and Ostrich, and wider than in the former, and more arched than in either of these living struthious birds.

In the metatarsal the presence of the three elements whose fusion constitutes the bone, is strongly marked; there does not appear to be any certain indications of a posterior or hind toe, though Professor Owen imagines he has detected feeble traces of a fourth digit: in that case the bird to which my specimens belonged, would be termed Palapteryx. The crania found by Mr. Walter Mantell at Waingongoro, and figured and described by Professor Owen in the Zoological Transactions (Vol. III., Plates 52, 53, 54, 55), as Dinornis and Palapteryx, must have belonged to birds of comparatively small stature. The skull with the adze-like upper mandible, and the enormously-developed basi-occipitals and basi-sphenoids (Dinornis, of Professor Owen, Plate 53), was found associated with many vertebræ of the neck and back, and bones of the leg, of the same bird; and these my son states indicated a height of from six to seven feet. The skull and the rest of the skeleton were found imbedded in sand, and lying in their natural relative position; unfortunately, all these precious remains, except the cranium, were destroyed by a sudden rush of the natives to seize upon the exhumed relics! It therefore yet remains to discover the cranial type that characterized the colossal forms at present known only by other parts of the skeleton.

Referring the reader to the additional account of the fossil birds of New Zealand given in a subsequent part of this volume (see Supplementary Notes, p. 173), I will conclude this notice with a few general remarks. From the numerous facts relating to the fossil remains of birds from our Antipodean colony, that have now been brought under the consideration of the naturalists and geologists of this country, we may safely conclude, that at a period geologically recent, but of immense antiquity in relation to the human inhabitants of those Islands, New Zealand was densely peopled by tribes of colossal struthious bipeds, of species and genera that have long since become extinct. I believe that ages ere the advent of the Maori tribes, the Moa and its kindred were the chief inhabitants of the country, and that from the period when those Islands were taken possession of by man, the race gradually diminished, and the colossal types were finally annihilated by human agency. That some of the largest species were contemporary with the Maories, there can now be no reasonable doubt. Apart from native traditions, and songs and tales in which allusions are made to the gigantic magnitude and flowing plumage of the Moa, the collocation of calcined and half roasted bones of the Dinornis, of dogs, and of the human species, in the ancient fire-heaps of the aborigines, and the unequivocal marks of the celt or axe of jade on some of the tibiæ,—the chips or cuts having evidently been made on the bones when recent,—afford incontrovertible proof that the last of the Moas, like the last of the Dodos, was annihilated by human agency.

From the remarkable size and strength of the thighs, legs, and feet of the Moas, it is clear that the hinder limbs must have constituted powerful locomotive organs; and when we consider the vast swarms of the largest species which existed at some remote period, it seems highly probable that this family of colossal birds,—a family unknown in any other part of the world,—was not originally confined within the narrow geographical limits of modern New Zealand, but ranged over a vast continent now submerged, and of which Phillip and Norfolk Islands, and Chatham and Auckland Islands, and those of New Zealand, are the culminating points.

But whatever may be the result of future discoveries as to the relative age of the bone-deposits, or the existence or extinction of any of the colossal species of Moa, or the former extension of the race over countries now submerged, one astounding fact must ever remain unassailable—the vast preponderance of the class Aves or Birds, that prevailed, and which still prevails, in the fauna of New Zealand, to the almost entire exclusion of mammalia and reptiles. Any palæontologist who saw only the collections sent over by my son, must have been astonished at their extent and variety. I may venture to affirm that such an assemblage of the fossil bones of birds was never before seen in Europe: nearly fifteen hundred specimens, collected from various parts of the country, with scarcely any intermixture of the remains of any other class;—it is a phenomenon as startling as the exclusively reptilian character of the fauna of the Wealden epoch. But the fauna of New Zealand, even at the present time, presents a character as ornithic and as anomalous as its ancient one; for while there are upwards of fifty or sixty genera of birds, there is but one indigenous mammalian quadruped known to naturalists—a species of rat! In this respect, therefore, as well as in its flora, in which ferns and other cellulosæ of peculiar types prevail to an extent unknown elsewhere, the country offers a striking example of that now acknowledged fact in natural history—a centre or focus of creation of certain organic types. And this law, with whose operation during the palæozoic and secondary ages modern geological researches have made us familiar, appears to have continued in unabated energy to the present moment.

From what has been advanced, it is manifest that the present geographical distribution of special groups of terrestrial animals and plants, displays as many anomalies in the relative predominance of the different classes and orders over certain areas, without relation to climatorial or other obvious physical conditions, as can be traced in the natural records of the earlier ages of the world. The conclusion therefore forces itself upon the mind, that throughout the vast periods of time to which our retrospective knowledge extends, the geological changes of the earth's surface, and the appearance and obliteration of species and genera, have been governed by the same physical and organic laws; and that notwithstanding the variable conditions of the land and the water, indicated by the sedimentary formations, there was at no period a greater discrepancy in the assemblages of certain types of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, than exists at present.

Of the nature of that law by which the extinction of a race of highly organized beings is determined, and whose effects through innumerable ages palæontology has in part revealed, we are as utterly ignorant as of that which governs the first appearance of the minutest living animalcule which the powers of the microscope enable us to descry; both are veiled in inscrutable mystery, the results only are within the scope of our finite comprehension.[3]

[3] See the concluding part of Lecture VIII. § 46, Wonders of Geology, vol. ii. p. 890.