THE MOUNTED SKELETON OF BRONTOSAURUS 69 
surface of cartilage. The pressure was thus much better dis- 
tributed over the joint, and the full weight of the part of the 
animal above water (reduced as it was by the cellular construc- 
tion of the bones) might be borne on these joints without the 
cartilage giving away. 
Looking at the mounted skeleton we may see that if a line be 
drawn from the hip-joint to the shoulder-blade, all the bones 
below this are massive, all above (including neck and head) are 
lightly constructed. This line then may be taken to indicate 
the average water-line, so to speak, of this Leviathan of the 
Shallows. The long neck, however, would enable the animal to 
wade to a considerable depth, and it might forage for food either 
in the branches or the tops of trees or, more probably, among 
the soft succulent water-plants of the bottom. The row of short, 
spoon-shaped, stubby teeth around the front of the mouth would 
serve to bite or pull off soft leaves and water-plants, but the 
animal evidently could not masticate its food, and must have 
swallowed it without chewing, as do modern reptiles and birds. 
The brain-case occupies only a small part of the back of the 
skull, so that the brain must have been small even for a reptile, 
and its organization (as inferred from the form of the brain-cast) 
indicates a very low grade of intelligence. Much larger than the 
brain proper was the spinal cord, especially in the region of the 
sacrum, controlling most of the reflex and involuntary actions 
of the huge organism. Hence we can best regard the Bronto- 
saurus as a great, slow-moving animal-automaton, a vast store- 
house of organized matter directed chiefly or solely by instinct 
and to a very limited degree, if at all, by conscious intelligence. 
Its huge size and its imperfect organization, as compared with 
the great quadrupeds of to-day, rendered its movements slow and 
clumsy; its small and low brain shows that it must have been 
automatic, instinctive and unintelligent. 
COMPOSITION OF THIS SKELETON. 
The principal specimen, No. 460, is from the Nine Mile Crossing of the 
Little Medicine Bow River, Wyoming. It consists of the 5th, 6th and 8th to 
13th cervical vertebre, 1st to 9th dorsal and 3d to roth caudal vertebre, all the 
ribs, both coracoids, parts of sacrum and ila, both ischia and pubes, left femur 
