44 



old, and has been brought to light by geological explorations set on foot by 

 Dr. Turner, Professor Mudge, Professor Marsh, W. E. Webb, and the writer. 

 Careful examinations of the remains discovered show that they are nearly all 

 to be referred to the reptiles and fishes. We find tliat they lived in the period 

 called Cretaceous, at the time when the chalk of England and the greensand- 

 marl of New Jersey were being deposited, and when many other huge rep- 

 tiles and fishes peopled both sea and land in those quarters of the globe. Tlie 

 thirty-seven species of reptiles found in Kansas up to the present time varied 

 from ten to eighty feet in length, and represented six orders, the same that 

 occur in the other regions mentioned. One only of the number was terres- 

 trial in their habits, and four were fliers; the remainder were inhabitants of 

 the salt ocean. When they swam over what are now the plains, the coast- 

 line extended from Arkansas to near Fort Riley, on the Kansas River, and 

 passing a little eastward traversed Minnesota to the British possessions, near 

 the head of Lake Superior. The extent of sea to the westward was vast, and 

 geology has not yet laid down its boundary; it was probably a shore now sub- 

 merged beneath the waters of the North Pacific Ocean. 



Far out on the expanse of this ancient sea might have been seen a huge, 

 snake-like form, which rose above the surface and stood erect, with taper- 

 ing throat and arrow-shaped head, or swayed about, describing a circle of 

 twenty feet radius above the water. Then plunging into the depths, naught 

 would be visible but the foam caused by the disappearing mass of life. 

 Should several have appeared together, we can easily imagine tall, flexible 

 forms rising to the height of the masts of a fishing-fleet, or hke snakes, 

 twisting and knotting themselves together. This extraordinary neck — for 

 such it was — rose from a body of elephantine proportions, and a tail of the 

 serpent-pattern balanced it behind. The limbs were probably two pair3 of 

 paddles like those of Plesiosaurus, from which this diver chiefly diflfered in 

 the arrangement of the bones of the breast. In the best-known species, 

 twenty-two feet represent the neck in a total length of fifty feet. This is the 

 Elasmosaurus platyurus, Cope, a carnivorous sea-reptile, no doubt adapted for 

 deeper waters than many of the others. Like the snake-bird of Florida, it 

 probably often swam many feet below the surface, raising the head to the 

 distant air for a breath, then withdrawing it, and exploring the depths forty 

 feet below, without altering the position of its body. From the localities in 

 wliich the bones have been found in Kansas, it nnist have wandered far from 



