8 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



pond and pulled it up, thickly covered with 

 sticky mud, whose existence would hardly be 

 suspected from the sparkling waters and pebbly 

 shores. If, instead of a lake, our animal had 

 gone to the bottom of some estuary into which 

 poured a river turbid with mud, the process of 

 entombment would have been still more rapid, 

 while, had the creature been engulfed in quick- 

 sand, it would have been the quickest method 

 of all ; and just such accidents did take place 

 in the early days of the earth as well as now. 

 At least two examples of the great Dinosaur 

 Thespesius have been found with the bones all 

 in place, the thigh bones stiU in their sockets 

 and the ossified tendons running along the 

 backbone as they did in life. This would 

 hardly have happened had not the body been 

 surrounded and supported so that every part 

 was held in place and not crushed, and it is 

 difficult to see any better agency for this than 

 burial in quicksand. 



If such an event as we have been supposing 

 took place in a part of the globe where the 

 land was gradually sinking — and the crust of 

 the earth is ever rising and falling — the mud 



