PRIMITIVE REPTILES AND BIRDS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21449, 15 April 1935, Page 18

PRIMITIVE REPTILES AND BIRDS

REPRESENTATIONS EXHIBITED AT MUSEUM

This week's exhibit at the Canterbury Museum consists of representations of the earliest flying reptiles and birds. No doubt the first animals that flew were insects, and some of these attained large size and considerable capacity for flight as far back as the great coal period. Insects with wings 10 inches across are found as fossils in the coal measures. But the first large animals that flew were reptiles of forms now long extinct. Instead of feathered wings they had thin membranes stretched between their fore-limbs, hind limbs, and sometimes to their tail. An elongated fifth finger had no claw, but was used to help to spread the membrane. Some of them had an expansion on the end of the tail like the tail of an aeroplane, which may have been used as a rudder. They must have been able to flap their wings, since tneir breastbone was keeled like that of birds of powerful flight, such as the albatross; but in all probability they used the membrane chiefly to assist in gliding. The bones of these early reptiles were hollow, and in other respects resembled those of birds. The earliest birds were closely related to reptiles. They had a long reptilian tail with feathers on each side, claws on the end of their wings and teeth in their jaws. Models of these flying reptiles and of the earliest known bird are shown illustrating these features, as well as a cast of the stone on which is the imprint of the bones of the earliest bird. It is from such specimens that the actual form of the animal has been deciphered. No traces of flying reptiles have been found in New Zealand up to the present.