GIANT REPTILES OF A PAST AGE. 



471 



the vertebrae, limb-bones, etc., of the brontosaurus, which have 

 been found in these beds. If, according to these remains, we make 

 a restoration of the whole skeleton, the result is an animal of about 

 sixty feet in length. But this is not all. The bone of the upper 

 hind-leg, the femur, of the brontosaurus is smaller than six feet. 



Fia. 6.— Skcll op Ceratosaurcs, one seventh natural size. 



But in the same museum there is, besides other remains, the 

 femur of a very similar dinosaur, found in the same beds, which 

 is about eight feet long, and belonged to an animal the length of 

 which has been estimated at from eighty to a hundred feet. It has 

 been called atlantosaurus, on account of its size. This atlantosau- 

 rus must have been a beast able to sweep down an elephant with 

 a stroke of its tail as a crocodile would a dog. Of all the known 

 land-animals, living or fossil ones, it is the largest, and it is prob- 

 able that Nature reached a limit in producing land-animals of 

 this size. 



If we compare with the atlantosaurus the smallest known dino- 

 saurs, we find an enormous difference. In the lithographic lime- 

 stones of Solenhofen, in Bavaria, which have yielded so many 

 well-preserved and interesting animals of the Jurassic formation, 

 a dinosaur has also been found. This animal, called compsogna- 

 thus, had posterior legs which were much longer than the anterior 

 limbs. It therefore probably walked or hopped on its hind-legs 

 like a kangaroo or a bird, and altogether, with its long neck and 

 small head, must have resembled a good deal the birds of the same 

 period. 



The name of dinosaurs means terrible saurians (Seivo?, terrible) ; 

 and, indeed, the aspect of animals like the atlantosaurus and others 

 was probably such as to justify this name. One of the oddest- 

 looking creatures of this order must have been an animal called 



