LIFE IN SECONDARY TIMES 269 



why a different form of pelvis should correspond with two 

 different dietaries. Unfortunately the series of carnivores is 

 still very incomplete, and is represented only by digitigrade 

 Theropods in which a post-pubis is absent. 



The monstrous Ceratopsidae, of which we have still to speak, 

 present a complete contrast with the Reptiles we have described. 

 Their neck and tail were of medium size. The trunk was powerful, 

 and the four limbs almost equal, each with five digits, all of which 

 were planted on the ground. It had the massive appearance of a 

 Rhinoceros, but of a rhinoceros whose gigantic dimensions 

 exceeded six metres in length and two or three metres in height 

 in the rear. Its head was perhaps one of the strangest things in 

 the whole animal kingdom. It terminated in front in a sort of 

 beak like that of a Bird of prey, which did not prevent the jaws 

 from being provided with two-rooted teeth implanted in alveoli, 

 and dilated in the rear into a great thick, osseous funnel- 

 shaped mantle, which covered the neck and reached almost to 

 the shoulders. This formidable head, two x or three 2 metres in 

 length, carried three powerful horns, one on the nose and two 

 others above the eyes. Other members of the Ceratopsid group, 

 Nodosaurus, for instance, were still further protected by a 

 bony, dermal armour-plating. These monsters lived during the 

 Cretaceous Period in North America, notably in Wyoming. 

 Only a single genus is known in Europe, CratcBomus, whose 

 presence Deperet discovered in Herault. They were herbivorous 

 like the Titanosaurians, Iguanodons, and Trachosaurians, which 

 may have been their contemporaries and were even more colossal. 

 All these herbivora must have lived in comparative peace. 

 Their great enemies were the Megalosaurians and Lczlaps, huge 

 carnivorous leaping Theropods of swift movements, against 

 whom they confidently opposed those terrible weapons, their 

 beaks and horns, and their impenetrable cephalic shield. 



Whence did these extraordinary and gigantic beings come 

 which peopled the land in Secondary times ? Doubtless the 

 land Vertebrates had already tentatively appeared by the close 

 of the Primary Period. Reptiles of the Trias, with varied 

 dentition, although still earth-crawlers, had attained large 

 dimensions, and some of them are distantly linked to the large 

 Stegocephalous Batrachians, to which also belong the Rhyn- 

 chocephalic Reptiles. These creatures, though still of moderate 



1 Triceratops flabellatus. 2 Triceralops prorsus. 



