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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



of Mammals, more especially the Dinosaurs, those gigantic, long-legged 

 land reptiles, as strange to our eyes as though from another planet. 

 Finally, within the last few years, the Museum has begun the representa- 

 tion of the vertebrate life of the Age of Amphibians, which preceded the 

 Age of Reptiles and includes the Carboniferous and Permian Periods of 

 geology. With this era we pass into a world as remote from the world 

 of the Dinosaurs as that is from our own. Its dominant land animals 

 were amphibians, remotely related to the modern salamanders, and 

 peculiar types of primitive reptiles wholly different from the reptiles of 

 the Dinosaur era and from any living kinds. Less gigantic than the 

 Dinosaurs or the great quadrupeds of the Age of Mammals, they are 



"ll^^^^^lM 



.,.^.<*'^'-^^'«^W> 



FIG. 2. ARMORED AMPHIBIAN ERYOPS. SKULL AND JAWS. 



Cope Permian Collection, presented by Morris K. Jesup. 



often most grotesque and peculiar. They are the first of land vertebrates, 

 and in their clumsy and awkward proportions and construction, they 

 impress one at every point with their imperfect adaptation to terrestrial 

 life. The great vertebrate phylum was then but beginning to adapt 

 itself to the more active life of the land, with its opportunities for evolu- 

 tion into higher types and more varied and complex modes of life than 

 were afforded by an aquatic habitat. Probably most of these primitive 

 land vertebrates were more or less amphibious; some we know were so. 

 But with the assumption of a terrestrial environment came the opportun- 

 ity for a more active life and continually higher development, as we see 

 it in the successive geological periods down to the present time. 



