Читать книгу Dragons of the Air: An Account of Extinct Flying Reptiles - H. G. Seeley - Страница 24

But the German interpretation is not uniform, and Hermann von Meyer, the banker-naturalist of Frankfurt a./M., who made himself conversant with all that his predecessors knew, and enlarged knowledge of the Pterodactyles on the most critical facts of structure, continued to regard them as true reptiles, but flying reptiles. Such is the influence of von Meyer that all parts of the world have shown a disposition to reflect his opinions, especially as they practically coincide with the earlier teaching of Cuvier. Owen and Huxley in England, Cope and Marsh in America, Gaudry in France, and Zittel in Germany have all placed the Pterodactyles as flying reptiles. Their judgment is emphatic. But there is weight of competent opinion to endorse the evolutionary teaching of Goldfuss that they rise above reptiles. To form an independent opinion the modern student must examine the animals, weigh their characters bone by bone, familiarise himself, if possible, with some of the rocks in which they are found; to comprehend the conditions under which the fossils are preserved, which have added not a little to the interest in Pterodactyles, and to the difficulty of interpretation.