Von Meyer's Palaeosauria

[Mickey Mortimer]

So I came across an interesting tangent on my review of Palaeosauriscus. 

Seeley (1876a) wrote "Hereafter perhaps it may be found desirable to group Ornithosaurs with the Dinosauria and Dicynodontia in the class Palæosauria instituted by Von Meyer for those extinct orders which hold places intermediate between the higher vertebrata." 

In 1882, Seeley notes "the great subclass of reptiles which von Meyer named PALÆOSAURIA, which I would enlarge, to include Crocodilia, Rhynchocephalia, Chelonia, Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, Anomodontia, and Dinosauria, and especially distinguish from the subclass CAINOSAURIA, in which should be comprised the Lacertilia and Ophidia."
We get a date in Seeley (1880) based on a lecture "originally delivered on the 19th April, 1879", when he says "EXACTLY fifty years ago Hermann von Meyer, the greatest comparative anatomist that Germany has produced, recognized the fact that the extinct reptiles of the secondary strata have characters in common, which separate them from their living allies ; and he proposed to name the group Palæosauria."
So that would make it 1829, but I think that was very close to the beginning of Meyer's published works. I figured a good candidate would be the reptile section of his really early (~1829-1833) Beitrage zur Petrefactenkunde, but it's not used there. Ditto for his 1832 Palaeologica zur Geschichte der Erde und ihrer Geschöpfe that officially describes Aeolodon and has a whole section on reptile classification.

Anyone have more information?

References- Meyer, 1832. Palaeologica zur Geschichte der Erde und ihrer Geschöpfe. Siegmund Schmerber. 560 pp.
Meyer, 1833?. Beitrage zur Petrefactenkunde. Neue fossile Reptilien, aus der Ordnung der Saurier. 115-144.
Seeley, 1876a. On the organization of the Ornithosauria. The Journal of the Linnean Society Zoology. 13(65), 84-107.

Seeley, 1880. The Dinosauria. The Popular Science Review. 4, 44-60.

Seeley, 1882. On Neusticosaurus pusillus (Fraas), an amphibious reptile having affinities with the terrestrial Nothosauria and with the marine Plesiosauria. The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. 38, 350-366.

Mickey Mortimer

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

Seeley put von Meyer's German name Palaeosaurier in Latin form as Palaeosauria. The term Palaeosaurier shows up in various German sources. I would need to do a bit of research to track down the first time von Meyer used it.

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