Animals of the PastLucas, Frederic A. (Frederic Augustus)
Science
Animals of the Past
Lucas, Frederic A. (Frederic Augustus)
Paleontology
And all this help is needed, for it is an easy matter to make a
wide-sweeping deduction, apparently resting on a good basis of fact, and
yet erroneous. Remains of the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros, found in
Siberia and Northern Europe, were thought to indicate that at the period
when these animals lived the climate was mild, a very natural inference,
since the elephants and rhinoceroses we now know are all inhabitants of
tropical climes. But the discovery of more or less complete specimens
makes it evident that the climate was not particularly mild; the
animals were simply adapted to it; instead of being naked like their
modern relatives, they were dressed for the climate in a woolly
covering. We think of the tiger as prowling through the jungles of
India, but he ranges so far north that in some localities this beast
preys upon reindeer, which are among the most northern of large mammals,
and there the tiger is clad in fairly thick fur.
When we come to coloring a reconstructed animal we have absolutely no
guide, unless we assume that the larger a creature the more soberly will
it be colored. The great land animals of to-day, the elephant and
rhinoceros, to say nothing of the aquatic hippopotamus, are very dully
colored, and while this sombre coloration is to-day a protection,
rendering these animals less easily seen by man than they otherwise
would be, yet at the time this color was developing man was not nor were
there enemies sufficiently formidable to menace the race of elephantine
creatures.
For where mere size furnishes sufficient protection one would hardly
expect to find protective coloration as well, unless indeed a creature
preyed upon others, when it might be advantageous to enable a predatory
animal to steal upon its prey.
Color often exists (or is supposed to) as a sexual characteristic, to
render the male of a species attractive to, or readily recognizable by,
the female, but in the case of large animals mere size is quite enough
to render them conspicuous, and possibly this may be one of the factors
in the dull coloration of large animals.
So while a green and yellow Triceratops would undoubtedly have been a
conspicuous feature in the Cretaceous landscape, from what we know of
existing animals it seems best to curb our fancy and, so far as large
Dinosaurs are concerned, employ the colors of a Rembrandt rather than
those of a sign painter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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