THE SERPENTLIKE SEA SAURIANS. 221 



Europe and appeared in the Senonian," and finally became extinct 

 there in the Msestrichtian." They also have been reported from 

 South America in the Purus * of the Amazon, corresponding to the 

 Msestrichtian * times. Professor Marsh's Ba'ptosaurus appears to 

 be the last of the American forms, found in the Upper Green Sand * 

 of ISTew Jersey and the ISTiobrara * of Kansas. 



In this connection it is interesting to note the views of certain 

 scientific men of the times in which these gigantic sea serpents 

 existed. 



The views of Prof. Frank C. Baker, curator of the Chicago 

 Academy of Sciences, follow: '^ At the time the great sea lizards 

 lived, North America was shaped something like the following: It 



Top of Skull of Clidaste8 velox (Marsh). 



included all of northeastern Canada and Nova Scotia; the shore line 

 was the same as at present as far as New York, where it was deflected 

 to the southwest and went through the western part of New Jersey, 

 Delaware, and Maryland, and then went directly across the middle of 

 Alabama, north again to the mouth of the Ohio Kiver where it meets 

 the Mississippi River, then north into Iowa, and finally north and 

 northwest across the United States and British America. Herein 

 existed a great inland sea in which the sea lizards lived. The past 

 history of the world tells us that thousands of animals of gigantic 

 size lived in the ancient seas. In old Jurassic and Cretaceous times we 

 had such queer combinations as Ichthyosaurus (or fish lizard) and 

 Plesiosaurus. Not only were reptiles found in the water; they flew 

 about in air. The latter were represented by the Bliam'phorynchus, a 

 birdlike reptile which had wings like a bat, teeth like an alligator, and 

 the tail of a lizard. In the Connecticut Valley we find the footprints 

 of huge reptiles in the red sandstones whose feet measured from those 

 of a few inches in length to the footprints of the gigantic Otozoum, 

 which measured twentv-two inches in length, having a step of some 

 five feet." 



* Subdivisions of the Cretaceous formation. 



