"Ptero-dactyle" - The turbulent discovery of the first pterosaur

In the spring of 1800, General Moreau crossed the Rhine river, with his French army invading Germany, Naploeon was beginning his campaign for world domination, and Professor Jean Hermann of Stragsbourg was preparing a memoir on a strange skeleton of a flying animal. In March, he sent his unfinished manuscript to Prof. Cuvier in Paris, including two drawings of what he thought it would look like in life. He saddly wrote "Aujourd'hui que notre paternal gouvernement me degoute de plus en plus de toute entreprise, j'en abandonne le projet." The unfinished manuscript, illustrating the first Pterosaur ever found, sat in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, until Drs. Philippe Taquet and Kevin Padian published the illustrations in the most recent edition of the Journal Comptes Rendus Paleovol. Histoire des sciences.