Dragons of Sea and A 



ir 



does the popular appellation of leather-back 

 turtle ; for, unlike other turtles, this has no 

 covering of plates of bone united with the 

 back-bone and ribs. Instead, the upper shell 

 or carapace is formed of hundreds of small ir- 

 regular pieces of bone embedded in thick skin, 

 and a skilful hand can remove all the skeleton 

 from the shell. This species, considered to be 

 a relative of the great extinct Archelon, attains 

 a very respectable size, a full-grown specimen 

 measuring 7 to 8 feet in length and weighing 

 from 700 to 1,000 pounds. But the skull of 

 Archelon was a yard long, the total length from 

 12 to 14 feet. The weight can only be guessed 

 at, but as turtles are solid animals, this could 

 not have been far from 2 tons. To forestall 

 the inevitable remark as to soup, it may be said 

 that if it resembled the modern leather-turtle, the 

 flesh was uneatable. The great fossil sea-turtle 

 had a scanty and thin covering of bone, some- 

 what like that of the modern species, and, like 

 him, was undoubtedly a sea rover. Such great 

 weight could with difficulty have been dragged 

 over the sandy shore. Archelon comes from 



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