Volume 4

Monograph on the fossil Reptilia of the Wealden and Purbeck formations : supplement.

  • Richard Owen
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Monograph on the fossil Reptilia of the Wealden and Purbeck formations : supplement. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/40 page 15
    The reverse of all these conditions is seen in the bones of the hind limbs of the Ignanodon and other Dinosaurian reptiles. If one takes the pleasure of speculating on the genesis of Bidm or Binornis, guiding or reining the roaming fancy by facts, the geographical limitation of such ornithicnitoid species, and their primitive association exclusively with creatures of which they could have no dread, suggest the more obvious and intelligible hypothesis of derivation from antecedent birds of flight, whose wings they still show more or less aborted, according to Buffbn^s principle of transmutation by degeneration,—with a progressive predominance of the legs over the wings, ultimately resulting in a maximization of the terrestrial and abortion of the aerial instruments of locomotion. LIBRARY
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