REPTILE RECONSTRUCTIONS IN THE UNITED 

 STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



By Charles W. Gilmore, 

 Associate Curator of Paleontology, United states National' Museum. 



[With 6 pbitps.] 



A few million years before the Rocky Mountains were born and 

 when that region was a land of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion, it was inhabited by a race of strange reptiles, upon whom 

 science has bestowed the appropriate name dinosaurs or terrible 

 lizards. 



Some of these dinosaurs were the largest animals that ever walked 

 the earth and some were very small. They differed greatly in size, 

 shape, structure, and habits. Some were plant eaters; others fed on 

 flesh. Some walked on four feet ; others with small weak fore limbs 

 walked upon the strongly developed hind legs. Some had reptile- 

 like feet; others were bird-footed. Some had toes provided with 

 long sharp claws; others had flattened hoof-like nails. There were 

 dinosaurs with small heads and others with large heads. Some were 

 large and cumbersome; others were small, light, and graceful and so 

 much resembled birds in their structure that only the skilled anato- 

 mist is able to distinguish their fossil remains. Some of large size 

 were clad in coats of bony armor, which gave them a most bizarre 

 appearance. 



The fossil remains of many of these various kinds of dinosaurs 

 are now on public exhibition in the United States National Museum, 

 and it is the purpose of the present article to describe some of the 

 more interesting features of a few of these great brutes. 



The first skeleton of a dinosaur to be displayed in the United States 

 National Museum was that of Trachodon annectens (Marsh), popu- 

 larly known as the Duck-billed dinosaur because of the general re- 

 semblance of the widely expanded nose to the bill of that bird. It 

 was mounted in 1903. 



It was one of two nearly complete specimens obtained many years 

 ago (1891) on Lance Creek, Niobrara County, Wyoming. The com- 

 pleteness of the specimen is due to the fact that the animal after 

 death was quickly covered with sand, and before decomposition 

 had set in. The result being that the bones remained articulated, 



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