On a Fossil Bird and a Fossil Cetacean from New Zealand
Open Access
- 1 February 1859
- journal article
- Published by Geological Society of London in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
- Vol. 15 (1-2) , 670-677
- https://doi.org/10.1144/gsl.jgs.1859.015.01-02.73
Abstract
Some time ago, my friend Mr. Walter Mantell submitted to my examination two fossil bones from tertiary deposits at Kakaunui and Parimoa in New Zealand. Of these, the one is the right tarso-metatarsal bone of a Bird belonging to the Penguin family, the other the humerus of a Cetacean of small size. Fossil Bird. —The former bone (of which a front view is represented in fig. 1, and a back view in fig. 2) measures two inches and a half in extreme length, and rather more than an inch and a quarter across its proximal end. The precise width at the distal end cannot be given, as the innermot part of this extremity ofthe bone has been broken away; what remains measures one and one-sixteenth of an inch. The proximal end of the bone presents two articular facets,—the one internal, an oval, shallow concavity, looking upwards and a little inwards, the other, external, quadrilateral, slightly convex from before backwards, slightly concave from side to side, and inclined more obliquely upwards and outwards. The two facets are separated by a stout median ridge, which rises into a conical tuberosity anteriorly, but dies away posteriorly into a shallow triangular pit. The posterior edges of both facets are rather more raised than the anterior ones; and marked transverse depressions separate both from the upper extremities of the four strong calcaneal ridges which project from the upper part of the posterior face of the bone (fig. 2). Of these, the innermost is the strongest and longest; and a deep groove divides it from the two middle ones,Keywords
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: