DEPTFORD QUATRAINS Why are Pterodactyls so called then?

Pterodactyl means “Winged Finger”. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the legs to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger. Well, I never. See below from Wikipedia:

A dactyl (Gr. δάκτυλος dáktulos, “finger”) is a type of metre in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. In accentual verse, such as in English it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables — the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).


An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, which is in dactylic hexameter:



A modern example is the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”:

Picture your self in a boat on a river with
tangerine tree-ees and marmalade skii-ii-es.

Written in dactylic tetrameter, the verses of the song have the rhythm of a waltz. The word “skies” takes up a full three beats. Dactyls are the metrical foot of Greek elegiac poetry, which followed a line of dactylic hexameter with dactylic pentameter.


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