The Romance of Modern Geology: Describing in simple but exact language the making of the earth with some account of prehistoric animal lifeGrew, Edwin Sharpe
Science
The Romance of Modern Geology: Describing in simple but exact language the making of the earth with some account of prehistoric animal life
Grew, Edwin Sharpe
Geology; Paleontology
The _Moa_ of Madagascar was smaller, and is known as the _Æpyornis_.
But it lays the largest egg known, a tremendous thing as big as
a Rugby football. It was this very large egg which inflamed the
imagination of ancient navigators, and led to the vast exaggeration
in describing the so-called "Roc," which Sindbad met with in the
_Arabian Nights_. In concluding these brief notes on extinct birds
we must also mention the present-day "kiwi" in New Zealand, which
resembles in some respects the _Apteryx_, or most ancient of birds.
Let us now return to the land reptiles of the Chalk period. These are
chiefly found in America, which was not submerged, as the greater
part of Europe was, beneath the ocean. The incursion of the sea
was more limited in the western hemisphere, and the land area was
large enough to allow the continued progress of the land reptiles,
though even here the sea reptiles seem to have done best. The great
Dinosaurs still kept in the forefront, but they were not quite so
pre-eminent as heretofore. The flesh-eating forms were less abundant,
though among them an enormous kangaroo-like reptile, fifteen feet
long, made its appearance. The _Dryptosaurus_ must have been speedy,
very powerful, and its habits must have made it appear like an ogre
in seven-league boots to its smaller inoffensive neighbours. The
Spoonbill Dinosaurs (_Hadrosaurus_) were very curious creatures, who
also faintly resembled a kangaroo, but had enormous lower parts and
crocodile-like tails.
But the most singular development appeared in the Ceratops family
of the vegetarian reptiles, particularly in the genus called
_Triceratops_. These were very large quadrupeds with enormous skulls
which stretched back over the neck and shoulders in an enormous
cape or hood of bone. Added to this was a sharp parrot-like beak, a
stout horn on the nose, a pair of large pointed horns on the top of
the head, and a row of projections round the edge of the cape. The
_Triceratops_ wanted all the protection it could get, for it had no
intelligence worth mentioning. Professor Marsh remarks that they had
the largest heads and the smallest brains of the reptile race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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