RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS 63 



der blades are precisely like those of a whale, 

 while the vertebrse are different from those 

 of any other animal, even its own cousin and 

 lesser contemporary Dorudon. There were 

 also tiny hind legs tucked away beneath skin, 

 but these, as well as many other parts of the 

 animal's structure were unknown, until INIr. 

 Charles Schuchert collected a series of speci- 

 mens for the National JNIuseum, from which it 

 was possible to restore the entire skeleton. 

 Owing to a rather curious circumstance the 

 first attempt at a restoration was at fault ; 

 among the bones originally obtained by INIr. 

 Schuchert there were none from the last half 

 of the tail, an old gully having cut off the 

 hinder portion of the backbone and destroyed 

 the vertebrae. Not far away, however, was a 

 big lump of stone containing several vertebras 

 of just the right size, and these were used as 

 models to complete the papier-mache skeleton 

 shown at Atlanta, in 1894. But a year after 

 Mr. Schuchert collected a series of vertebrae, 

 beginning with the tip of the tail, and these 

 showed conclusively that the first lot of tail 

 vertebrae belonged to a creature still unde- 



