THE DINOSAURS OR TERRIBLE LIZARDS. 



Bv F. A. Lucas. 



"Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small." 



A few million years ago, geologists and physicists do not agree 

 upon the exaet number, although both agree upon the millions, when 

 the Rocky Mountains were not yet born and the now bare and arid 

 Western plains a land of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegetation, the 

 region was inhabited by a race of strange and mighty reptiles upon 

 whom science has bestowed the appropriate name of Dinosaurs, or 

 terrible lizards. 



Our acquaintance with the Dinosaurs is comparatively recent, dating 

 from tlic early part of the nineteenth century, and in America, at 

 least, the date may be set at 1818, when the first Dinosaur remains 

 were found in the valley of the Connecticut, although they naturally 

 were not recognized as such, nor had the term been devised. The 

 first Dinosaur to be formally recognized as representing quite a new 

 order of reptiles was the carnivorous Megalosaur, found near Oxford. 

 England, in 1824. 



For a long time our knowledge of Dinosaurs was very imperfect 

 and literally fragmentary, depending mostly upon scattered teeth, 

 isolated vertebrae, or fragments of bone picked up on the surface or 

 casually encountered in some mine or quarry. Now, however, thanks 

 mainly to the labors of American palaeontologists, thanks also to the 

 rich deposits of fossils in our Western States, we have an extensive 

 knowledge of the Dinosaurs, of their size, structure, habits, and gen- 

 eral appearance. 



There are to-day no animals living that are closely related to them: 

 none have lived for a long period of time, for the Dinosaurs came to 

 an end in the Cretaceous, and it can only be said that the crocodiles, 

 on the one hand, and the ostriches, on the other, are the nearest exist- 

 ing relatives of these great reptiles. 



For, though so different in outward appearance, birds and reptiles 

 are structurally quite closely allied, and the creeping snake and the 



Reprinted, with the accompanying illustrations, by permission of McClure, Phil- 

 lips i<: Co., from Animals of the Past. 



8M 1901 41 641 



