CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



the pointed snout in some of these fishes became longer. 

 Toward the end of the Cretaceous period (represented by 

 the Chalk), the snout is much elongated and occasionally 

 forms even a sharp blade, as deadly as that of some existing 

 sword fishes. The increasing power of the snout was thus 

 acquired by gradual growth, which can be followed in the 

 fossils stage by stage. 



Among land mammals, or quadrupeds, the deer are very 

 interesting for the same reason. Fossils show that the earliest 

 deer had no horns, or antlers. The next deer had small 

 antlers, but none of them were forked more than once. A 

 little later, in the Tertiary period, some of the deer had 

 antlers with from two to four prongs. In the later part of 

 the Pliocene epoch, in the Tertiary period, some of the deer, 

 when full-grown, had antlers even larger and more complex 

 than any deer existing at the present day. Indeed, it is 

 probable that these deer were handicapped by their over- 

 grown antlers and so died out. 



Overgrowth of a part that has begun to show progressive 

 enlargement is often observed among fossils. The gigantic 

 tusks of the elephants that lived in late Pliocene and Pleisto- 

 cene times are further examples. Also the great canine 

 teeth of the sabre-toothed tigers, which lived with them. In 

 both these animals the enlargement was doubtless a hin- 

 drance and eventually helped to put an end to them. Exces- 

 sive enlargement of this kind must have been usually a 

 hindrance, but there is one great enlargement, already men- 

 tioned, which proved to be an advantage — that of the brain 

 in mammals. The great growth of the brain which led to 

 the appearance of man, with his superior mental equipment, 

 was the natural result of the progressive development of the 

 brain in the higher mammals during the Tertiary epoch. 

 Though the fossil apes were very different from modern 



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