THE SERPENTLIKE SEA SAURIANS. 209 



THE SERPENTLIKE SEA SAURIANS. 



By WILLIAM H. BALLOU. 



IJST the latter part of tlie Mesozoic age tliere was a great inland 

 ocean, spreading over a large part of the present continent. The 

 lands then above water were covered with a flora peculiar to the times 

 and were inhabited by some of the animals which later distinguished 

 the Cenozoic age. In the seas were reptiles, fishes, and turtles of 

 gigantic proportions, armed for offense or defense. There were also 

 oysterlike bivalves, with enormous shells, three or four feet in 

 diameter, the meat of which would have fed many people. In time, 

 this great ocean, swarming with Adgorous life, disappeared. Moun- 

 tain ranges and plains gradually arose, casting forth the waters and 

 leaving the monsters to die and bleach in Tertiary suns. As the 

 waters remaining divided into smaller tracts, they gradually lost 

 their saline stability. The stronger monsters gorged on the weaker 

 tribes, until they, too, stranded on rising sand bars, or lost vitality 

 and perished as the waters freshened. In imagination, we can pic- 

 ture the strongest, bereft of their food supply at last, and floundering 

 in the shallow pools until all remaining mired or starved. It would 

 be interesting to know how much of the great Cretaceous ocean 

 forms a part, if any, of the vast oceans of to-day. If any part so 

 survived, what became of the saurians carried forth into new ocean 

 areas? Were they beaten on jagged rocks by powerful currents and 

 destroyed, or did some of them escape only to perish in after ages? 

 Water, as a rule, seeks its level; sometimes it is evaporated. If the 

 Cretaceous ocean merely drained off into other areas before rising 

 lands, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suppose that the descendants 

 of some of the saurians might have survived in the Atlantic or Pacific 

 as they had existed in the Mesozoic age. We can therefore only 

 assume that the Cretaceous seas evaporated or gradually freshened 

 until all the life they contained became extinct. 



During the past twenty-five years explorers have collected tons 

 of skeletons of the stranded sea serpents, or better, perhaps, serpent- 

 like sea saurians. A sensational Avorld has ever been on the lookout 

 for sea serpents. It is possible that such tendencies are inherited 

 from a very remote ancestor, a primeval, manlike animal, whose 

 curiosity was aroused by glimpses of some surviving pytlionomorph. 



Almost everywhere on the expanse of the Cretaceous ocean 

 might have been seen the snakelike forms of the elasmosaurs, the 

 heads arrow-shaped, upheld by swanlike necks, rising from ten to 

 twenty feet above the surface and scanning the sea or air for prey 

 or enemies. The prey located below, they dived; the enemy seen 



VOL. LIU. — 16 



