4 The Alligator and Its Allies 



animals, this fact does not in the least diminish the 

 intense interest in the individual members of the 

 order. 



ANCESTRY 



Although the huge dragon-like dinosaurs or 

 : ' terrible reptiles," some of which were probably 

 more than one hundred feet long, became extinct 

 during the Mesozoic epoch, perhaps millions of 

 years before man made his appearance upon earth, 

 we have one group of reptiles still living in certain 

 parts of the earth of which the Mesozoic lords of 

 creation need not feel ashamed. While most of 

 the living Crocodilia are mere pigmies in size, 

 compared to the Atlantosaurus, there are a few 

 representatives of the living group, to be discussed 

 later, that are said to reach a length of thirty feet, 

 which length makes pigmies, in turn, of most of 

 the other living reptiles. 



Considering the extinct as well as the living 

 Crocodilia, Gadow says it is very difficult to sepa- 

 rate them from the Dinosauria. In the Mesozoic 

 Crocodilia the fore limbs were much shorter and 

 weaker than the hind limbs, as was often the case 

 with the dinosaurs; they were almost entirely 

 marine, but gave indications of descent from ter- 

 restrial forms. 



Various facts point, thinks Gadow, "to some 

 Theropodous Dinosaurian stock of which the Croc- 



