III. On the archeopteryx of von Meyer, with a description of the fossil remains of a long-tailed species, from the lithographic stone of Solenhofen

Abstract

The first evidence of a Bird in strata of the Oxfordian or Corallian stage of the Oolitic series was afforded by the impression of a single feather, in a slab of the lithographic calcareous laminated stone, or slate, of Solenhofen; it is described and figured with characteristic minuteness and care by M. Hermann von Meyer, in the fifth part of the ‘Jahrbuch für Mineralogie.’ He applies to this fossil impression the term Archeopteryx lithographica ; and although the probability is great that the class of Birds was represented by more than one genus at the period of the deposit of the lithographic slate, and generic identity cannot be predicated from a solitary feather, I shall assume it in the present instance, and retain for the genus, which can now be established on adequate characters, the name originally proposed by the distinguished German palaeontologist. At the Meeting of the Mathematico-Physical Class of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Munich, on the 9th of November, 1861, Professor Andreas Wagner communicated the discovery, in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen, of a considerable portion of the skeleton of an animal with impressions of feathers radiating fanwise from each anterior limb, and diverging obliquely in a single series from each side of a long tail.