Identifier: zologytextbook00cock (find matches)
Title: Zöology; a textbook for colleges and universities
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Cockerell, Theodore D. A. (Theodore Dru Alison), 1866-1948
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: Yonkers-on-Hudson, N. Y., World book company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MBLWHOI Library

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ed as of aboutthe size of a crow, with a small head having toothedjaws and no true beak. The neck vertebrae were lessnumerous than in modern birds. The tail was mostremarkable, with about twenty bones as in a reptile,but covered with long feathers. There were birdlikewings, with long feathers adapted for flight, but thesewings had in addition three digits, each with a hookedclaw. The legs were four-toed. This animal wascertainly a member of the class Aves, since it hadfeathers; but in other respects it was intermediatebetween birds and reptiles. It is almost the ideallink which evolutionists might have postulated andhoped to find. Other toothed birds, called Hesper-ornis and Ichthyornis, have been found in the Creta-ceous rocks of Kansas. These are not only more recentthan the Archceopteryx, but are much more like typicalbirds. 8. Many other extinct birds are known, though the The greatremains are mostly fragmentary. From the LowerEocene of Wyoming comes the gigantic Diatryma, ZOOLOGY
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BIRDS 381 • f nearly 7 feet high, with a large head and short andmassive neck. The beak is extremely large and com-pressed, and quite without teeth. The wings weregreatly reduced, as in the cassowary, and the bird waswholly unable to fly. Although fragments of Diatrymawere discovered in New Mexico in 1874, no one had anyaccurate idea of the nature of the bird until Mr. W.Stein found a nearly complete skeleton in Wyomingin 1916. Passing over about three million years, we come to Birdsofthethe deposits of the Rancho La Brea, near Los Angeles,California. Here a great number of bones of mammalsand birds are found embedded in asphalt, which belongsto the Pleistocene period, and is thousands but notmillions of years old. The very numerous birds, whichwere entrapped by the tar which still comes to the sur-face in the locality, have not yet been fully described.Their structure was, however, essentially like that ofliving species, the modernized type of bird having fullyevolved at the time r

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