The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
trees with their fore legs while they devoured the foliage. Among the
browsers, for example, were the _Diplodocus carnegii_, which measured
eighty=four feet in length, and the _Atlantosaurus_. The
_Gigantosaurus_, disinterred by a German expedition in 1912 from rocks
in East Africa, was still more colossal. It measured well over a hundred
feet! These greater monsters had legs, and they are usually figured as
standing up on them; but it is very doubtful if they could have
supported their weight in this way, out of water. Buoyed up by water or
mud, they may have got along. Another noteworthy type we have figured is
the _Triceratops_. There were also a number of great flesh-eaters who
preyed upon these herbivores. Of these, _Tyrannosaurus_ seems almost the
last word in “frightfulness” among living things. Some species of this
genus measured forty feet from snout to tail. Apparently it carried this
vast body kangaroo fashion on its tail and hind legs. Probably it reared
itself up. Some authorities even suppose that it leapt through the air.
If so, it possessed muscles of a quite miraculous quality. A leaping
elephant would be a far less astounding idea. Much more probably it
waded half submerged in pursuit of the herbivorous river saurians.
§ 2
One special development of the dinosaurian type of reptile was a light,
hopping, climbing group of creatures which developed a bat-like web
between the fifth finger and the side of the body, which was used in
gliding from tree to tree after the fashion of the flying squirrels.
These bat-lizards were the _Pterodactyls_. They are often described as
_flying_ reptiles, and pictures are drawn of Mesozoic scenery in which
they are seen soaring and swooping about. But their breastbone has no
keel such as the breastbone of a bird has for the attachment of muscles
strong enough for long-sustained flying. They must have flitted about
like bats. They must have had a grotesque resemblance to heraldic
dragons, and they played the part of bat-like birds in the Mesozoic
jungles. But bird-like though they were, they were not birds nor the
ancestors of birds. The structure of their wings was altogether
different from that of birds. The structure of their wings was that of a
hand with one long finger and a web; the wing of a bird is like an arm
with feathers projecting from its hind edge. And these Pterodactyls had
no feathers.
§ 3
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