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| Johann Hermann's Pterodactylus, 1800 |
It began, as many great scientific mix-ups do, with an enthusiastic man, a misplaced fossil, and a few patriotic misunderstandings.
Back in March of 1800, Johann Hermann — a German-slash-French scientist (depending on which invading army was in town that week) — became convinced that an odd fossil described by Collini held the key to something extraordinary.
Without actually seeing the specimen, Hermann took a bold scientific leap: he announced that the animal used its absurdly long fourth finger to support a wing membrane.
This, in hindsight, was rather brilliant — and also rather lucky. Hermann mailed off a letter (and a sketch) to the great French naturalist Georges Cuvier, suggesting that the fossil might even have been war booty, plundered by Napoleon’s scientifically curious troops and whisked off to Paris. After all, France’s armies were busily collecting everything from priceless art to interesting bones at the time — science’s version of a clearance sale.
In his letter, Hermann proposed that this mysterious creature was a mammal. Yes, a furry, bat-like, possibly adorable flying thing. He imagined it with soft pelage, wings stretching elegantly from its fourth finger to its ankle, and a fashionable membrane connecting neck to wrist — the very portrait of prehistoric glamour.
Cuvier, intrigued and perhaps unwilling to admit he didn’t have the fossil in question, agreed with the wing idea but drew the line at “fuzzy mammal.” In December 1800, he published a short note, adopting Hermann’s winged interpretation but firmly declaring, “Non, monsieur — this thing is definitely a reptile.”
Meanwhile, the fossil — allegedly stolen, possibly missing, and definitely not in Paris — turned up safe and sound in Munich. It had been spared confiscation thanks to one Baron von Moll, who managed to secure an “exemption from French enthusiasm.”
By 1809, Cuvier revisited the mystery, producing a longer and more confident description. He called it Petro-Dactyle (a typo he later fixed to Ptéro-Dactyle), thereby cementing both his reputation and a new spelling headache for future generations of palaeontologists.
He also took the time to dunk on his colleague Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who had suggested the fossil might belong to a shore bird. Cuvier’s rebuttal was deliciously dry:
“It is not possible to doubt that the long finger served to support a membrane that, by lengthening the anterior extremity of this animal, formed a good wing.”
And with that, science had its first flying reptile — a creature born not only from stone but from a glorious mix of imagination, rivalry, and a few well-placed postal misunderstandings.
If you ever feel unqualified to make a bold scientific claim, remember Johann Hermann — who identified a whole new order of life without even seeing the fossil. Sometimes, a good guess (and a long finger) can take you far as history shows here in the The Great Finger Fiasco: How Johann Hermann and Georges Cuvier Accidentally Invented the Flying Reptile.
