ANIMALS BEFORE MAN 



USTTEODUCTION 



It is the aim of this book to picture the 

 early life of our continent, to tell something of 

 the fishes that once swam about its shores, the 

 reptiles that splashed through the swamps, and 

 the mammals that long ago roamed the Western 

 plains. Books and museums and zoological 

 gardens have made us familiar with the animals 

 of the present, but we are apt to have rather 

 vague ideas of the animals of the past. Whirl- 

 ing through New Jersey, the traveler notes in 

 the morning paper that a mastodon has just 

 been unearthed near New Brunswick, and may 

 wonder how the landscape would look with 

 herds of mastodons in place of the familiar cat- 

 tle. The geologist might say that this was the 

 case only a short time ago, while long before 

 the same land was occupied by huge, unfamiliar 

 reptiles. The life of our continent has indeed 



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