Extinct Monsters: A Popular Account of Some of the Larger Forms of Ancient Animal LifeHutchinson, H. N. (Henry Neville)
Science
Extinct Monsters: A Popular Account of Some of the Larger Forms of Ancient Animal Life
Hutchinson, H. N. (Henry Neville)
Paleontology
Diplodocus, of which several incomplete specimens have been
discovered, was intermediate in size between Atlantosaurus and
Morosaurus, and may have reached when living, a length of forty or
fifty feet. Its skull was of moderate size, with slender jaws. The
teeth were weaker than those of any other known Dinosaur, and entirely
confined to the front of the jaws. Professor Marsh concludes from the
teeth that Diplodocus was herbivorous, feeding on succulent
vegetation, and that it probably led an aquatic life. Fig. 11 shows
its skull.
The remains of this interesting Dinosaur (Brontosaurus), which in
several ways differs from other members of the "lizard-footed" group,
were found in Upper Jurassic beds, near Cañon City, Colorado. A second
smaller species was also discovered near Morrison, Colorado. All the
remains lay in the Atlantosaurus beds. These strata--the tomb in which
Nature has buried up so many of her dragons of old time--can be traced
for several hundred miles on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains, and
are always to be known by the bones they contain. They lie above the
Triassic strata and just below the Sandstone of the Dakota group. Some
have regarded them as of Cretaceous age; but, judging from their
fossils, there can be but little doubt that they were deposited
during the Jurassic period--probably in an old estuary. They consist
of shale and sandstone.
Besides the numerous Dinosaurs, Professor Marsh's colleagues have
found abundant remains of crocodiles, tortoises, and fishes, with one
Pterodactyl, a flying reptile (see chap. viii.), and several small
marsupials. The wonderful collection of American Jurassic Dinosaurs in
the Museum of Yale College includes the remains of several hundred
individuals, many of them in excellent preservation, and has afforded
to Professor Marsh the material for his classification already alluded
to.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Head of _Diplodocus_.
1. Side view. 2. Front view.]
English Dinosaurs of the Lizard-footed Group.
Unfortunately, there are at present no complete skeletons known of
English Dinosaurs related to the American forms above described. But,
since the English fossils were first in evidence by many years, and
Marsh's discoveries have confirmed in a remarkable way conclusions
drawn by Owen, Huxley, Hulke, and Seeley, and others from materials
that were rather fragmentary, it may be worth while to give some
account of these remains and the interpretations they have received.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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