March. 102<) 



!•: V O L U T I O N 



Page Five 



FREDERIC AUGUSrUS LUCAS 



Dr. Frederic A. Lucas, director of the 

 American Museum of Natural- History 

 from 1911 to 1923 and since then its 

 honorarj- director, died at his home in 

 Flushing, Long Island, on February 9th 

 at the age of 76. He was buried at 

 Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he was 

 born March 25th, 1852. 



He specialized in zoology and was an 

 outstanding authority on ancient ani- 

 mals. He held important scientific and 

 administrativ« posts with the United 

 States National Museum and the Brook- 

 lyn Institute of Arts and Science before 

 ajsuming the directorship of the Amer- 



member ot 



ivan Museum, and wjis 

 many learned societies. 



Dr. Lucas was well known to the 

 readers of Evolution through his many 

 popular articles on The Animals of the 

 Past, which have been very widely ap- 

 [jreciated. The editors are trying to 

 -ecure the use of much other similar 

 material which he had prepared before 

 iiis death. To help carry on the work 

 he did so well in his life of long 'use- 

 fullness is our idea of honoring this ^ 

 kindly gentleman of science who never 

 found any trouble too great in helping 

 ti-v further the cause of popular knowl- 

 edge. 



Sea Serpents and Such 



By FREDERIC 



LIKFl the "Fossil man," the sea-serpent flourishes perenial- 

 ly in the newspapers and, although now mainly regarded 

 as a joke, there have been attempts to place him on a founda- 

 tion of firm fact. The most earnest M. Oudemans expressed 

 his belief in a rare, huge seal-like creature whose occasional 

 appearance in southern waters gave rise to the best authenti- 

 cated reports of sea-serpents. It has been suggested that 

 some animal believed to be extinct had really lived over to 

 the present. The few waifs spared from ancient faunas and 

 stranded on the shores of the present, such as the Australian 

 Ceratodus and our cornmon Gar Pike were used to sustain 

 this theory. If fish of such ancient lineage are still so com- 

 mon, why may there not be a few Plesiosaurs or Mosasaurs 

 somewhere in the ocean depths? We may, of course, "sup- 

 pose" anj'thnig, but as no trace of these creatures has been 

 found outside of their ancient strata, all probabilities oppose 

 the theory. But had these creatures been spared, they might 

 well have passed for sea-serpents, even though Zeuglodc n. 

 the most serpent-like in form, was not a reptile at all. 



Zeuglodon, "the yoke tooth," named from the shape of 

 its great cutting teeth, was a strange animal, with four feet 

 of head, ten feet of body and forty feet of tail, with body 

 vertebrae of moderate size, but with those of the tail fifteen 

 to eighteen inches long, the longest known for the bulk of 

 the creature and weighing in the fossil condition fifty to sixty 

 pounds. The tail obviously wagged the dog. The animal was 

 fifty to seventy feet long and not more than six or eight 

 feet througli the deepest part of the body: the head was 

 small and pointed, the jaws well armed with grasping and 

 cutting teeth, and just back of the head was a pair of short 

 paddles like those of a fur seal. Its articulations point to 

 great freedom of movement up and down. This may mean 

 it was an active diver, descending to great depths to prey 

 on squid, as the Sperm-Whale does today, and that it could 

 rear a third of its great length out of water for a wide view 

 of its surroundings. If size indicates power, the great fluked 

 tail was capable of propelling the lieast at twenty to thirty 

 miles an hour, a speed needed for the small head to provide 

 food for the great tail. Or it may be that the inability to 

 do this was the reason why Zeuglodon became extinct. On 

 the other hand, the huge tail may have served to store up fat 

 to be drawn upon when food became scarce. 



Zetiglodor.s were numerous in the old Gulf of Mexico and 

 seas of soutbern Europe, for bones are found abundantly. 

 But common though the bones may be. the stories of their 

 use for making stone walls resolve theinselves on close scru- 

 tiny into the occasional use of a big vertebra fn support the 

 corner of a corncrih. 



A. LUCAS 



Its sciciuitic name is Basilosaurus cetoides, the whale-like 

 king lizard, given it by the original describer. Dr. Harlan, 

 who thought it to be a reptile. The rule of science is that 

 the first naine given an animal may not be changed, even by 

 a zoological congress, so Zeuglodon must masquerade as a 

 reptile for the rest of its paleontological life. Owen's name 

 "Zeuglodon," though not scientific, is too good to waste, being 

 easily remeinbered and readily pronounced. 



Dr. Albert Koch, doing with Zeuglodon as, later on, he 

 did with the Mastodon, combined the vertebrae of several into 

 ■A mimster 114 feet long! This he exhibited in Europe under 

 the name "Hydrarchus," or water king, finally disposing of 

 the composite creature to the Museum of Dresden, where it 

 was promptly reduced to its proper dimensions. Its natural 

 make-up is sufficiently composite without any aid from man, 

 for the head and paddles are like those of a seal, the ribs 

 like those of a manatee, and the shoulder blades precisely 

 like those of a whale, while the vertebrae are different from 

 those of any other animal. There were also tiny hind legs 

 tucked away beneath the skin, but these were unknown until 

 Mr. Charles Schuchert collected a series of specimens for the 

 National Jluseum, from which the entire skeleton could be 

 restored. Unlike ordinary fossil bones which break indif- 

 ferently in any direction, those of Zeuglodon are built of 

 concentric layers, like an onion, which tend to peel off during 

 'he preparation of a specimen. 



Ai the wheels of time and change rolled slowly on, sharks 

 again came uppermost, the warin Eocene and Miocene oceans 

 fairly teeming with these sea-wolves. There were striall 

 sharks with slender teeth for catching little fishes, larger 

 sharks with saw-like teeth for cutting slices out of larger 

 fishes, and sharks that might have swallowed the biggest fish 

 of today whole. We know these monsters mostly by their 

 teeth, for their skeletons were soft cartilage, the absence of 

 t^e'n remains being the reason these creatures are passed by 

 while the adjectives huge, immense, enormous are lavished 

 on Mosasaurs and Plesiosaurs that the great-toothed shark, 

 Carcharodon megalodon, might well have eaten at a meal. 

 For its gaping jaws with hundreds of gleaming teeth must 

 liave measured not less than six feet across. 



Our great White Shark, the man-eater, attains a length of 

 lliirty feet, and a man just makes him a good lunch. One 

 of his teeth is an inch and a cjuarter long, while a tooth of 

 Megalodon is commonly three, often four or even five inches. 

 This would indicate a shark 120 feet long, bigger than any 

 whale, to whom a man would be just a mouthful to whet his 

 sharkship's appetite. Certainly it was at least seventy-five to 

 one-hundred feet long, quite large enough to make bathing in 



