Reptilia Sentence Examples
Cuvier went no further than Brongniart, and, in the Regne Animal, he dropped the term Amphibia, and substituted Reptilia for it.
Latreille 6 published a new classification of the Vertebrata, which are primarily divided into Haematherma, containing the three classes of Maminifera, Monotremata and A y es; and Haemacryma, also containing three classes - Reptilia, Amphibia and Pisces.
Huxley adopted Latreille's view of the distinctness of the Amphibia, as a class of the Vertebrata, co-ordinate with the Mammalia, A y es, Reptilia and Pisces; and the same arrangement was accepted by Gegenbaur and Haeckel.
The Reptilia include II species of the crocodile, alligator and lizard, including the savage jacare of the Amazon, several species of turtle, 4 species of batrachians, and 29 species of serpents, including the striped rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus), Lachesis mutus, and a rather rare species of Cophias.
They are transparent leaf-like organisms and may often be found attached to the skin, mouth, nostrils or gills of fish; on the skin and bladder of Amphibia; and on those of certain Reptilia.
Successive discoveries gradually revealed the world of extinct Reptilia; in 1821 Charles Konig (1784-1851), the first keeper of the mineralogical collection in the British Museum, described Ichthyosaurus from the Jurassic; in the same year William Daniel Conybeare (1787-1857) described Plesiosaurus; and a year later (1822) Mosasaurus; in 1824 William Buckland described the great carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus; while Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790--1852) in 1848 announced the discovery of Iguanodon.
Able as von Meyer was, his classification of the Reptilia failed because based upon the single adaptive characters of foot structure.
Nature, limited in her resources for adaptation, fashioned so many of these animals in like form that we have learned only recently to distinguish similarities cf analogous habit from the similitudes of real kinship. From whatever order of Mammalia or Reptilia an animal may be derived, prolonged aquatic adaptation will model its outer, and finally its inner, structure according to certain advantageous designs.
The Reptilia include countless numbers of alligators in the Guayas and its tributaries and in the tide-water channels of many of the smaller rivers; many species of lizards, of which Mr Whymper found three in the Quito basin; snakes of every description from the huge anaconda of the Amazon region down to the beautifully marked coral snake; and a great variety of frogs and toads.
Of Reptilia Chile is singularly free, there being recorded only eleven species - five saurians, four ophidians, one frog and one toad - but a more thorough survey of the uninhabited territories of the south may increase this list.
AdvertisementNot so, however, when the extinct forms of vertebrate life are taken into consideration, for there is a group of reptiles from the early part of the Secondary, or Mesozoic period, some of whose members must have been so intimately related to mammals that, were the whole group fully known, it would clearly be impossible to draw a distinction between Mammalia on the one hand and Reptilia on the other.
They are separated from fishes and batrachians (Pisces and Batrachians) on the one hand, and agree with reptiles, and birds (Reptilia and A y es) on the other, in the possession during intra-uterine life of the membranous vascular structures respectively known as the amnion and the allantois, and likewise in the absence at this or any other period of external gills.
Many authors who have devoted special attention to questions of nomenclature therefore think Reptilia and Batrachia the correct names of the two great classes into which the Linnaean Amphibia have been divided, and consider that the latter term should be reserved for the use of those who, like that great authority, the late Professor Peters, down to the time of his death in 1883, would persist in regarding reptiles and batrachians as mere sub-classes (1).
Reptilia (see Reptiles).
Latreille,2 rightly estimating the value of these differences, though he was not an original worker in the field of vertebrate zoology, proposed to separate Brongniart's Batrachia from the class of Reptilia proper, as a group of equal value, for which he retained the Linnaean name of Amphibia.
AdvertisementGray; but Dumeril and Bibron in their great work,' and Dr Gunther in his Catalogue, in substance, adopted Brongniart's arrangement, the Batrachia being simply one of the four orders of the class Reptilia.