The Reign of Reptiles 



ficient, and that was in the important matter of 

 brains. The strange anomodonts were called 

 stupid, but the dinosaurs appear to have had 

 no more brain than was absolutely necessary for 

 life itself — not enough if judged by our high 

 standards. Man has an average of about two 

 pounds of brain to a hundred pounds of total 

 weight, while the dinosaurs did not have one- 

 fourth of this amount of brain to the ton. 

 Here again Professor Marsh has embodied an 

 idea in the name MorosauruSj stupid lizard, 

 applied to one of these old giants.* 



The giant Sauropoda culminated in the Ju- 

 rassic, and their extinction during Lower Creta- 

 ceous time is believed to have been brought 

 about by the sinking of the interior portion of 

 our continent. This permitted the encroach- 

 ments of the inland sea, the American Mediter- 

 ranean, that stretched northwestward from the 

 Gulf of Mexico. The marshy haunts of the 

 dinosaurs became salt meadows, then shallows 



* Not that a scientific name must of necessity refer to some 

 feature possessed by the animal to which it is given, although the 

 best names usually do contain an allusion to some evident char- 

 acter or habit or to the locality where the animal was first found. 



163 



