■182 THE RESTORATION OF EXTINCT ANIMALS. 



with types not strikingly different in structure from those that live 

 to-day. Had he come upon some of the forms which have subsequently 

 come to light he might well have been puzzled, for since the time of 

 Cuvier animals have been discovered in which claws like those of a 

 carnivore are combined with teeth fitted for a vegetable diet. Such a 

 one is the animal called Agriochoerus (plant eater), from the Miocene 

 of the^West. and so strikingly at variance are the parts of the skeleton 

 that. ha\'ing been found at ditferent times, the foreclaws were supposed 

 to be those of a carnivorous mammal and described under the name of 

 Me><onyii' (middle claw), the hind foot dubbed Artlanyx (straight claw), 

 under the supposition that the beast was related to the sloths, while 

 the skull with its herbivorous teeth bore the name of AgriochoeTus. 

 Not until the discoveiy of a fairly complete specimen in which the 

 various parts were associated was this snarl of names disentangled. 

 Still the occurrence of such forms are not precisely the exceptions that 

 prove the rule, but cx})ressions of the fact that the more recent ani- 

 mals ari' the more highly specialized or adapted for special modes of 

 life, be they devourers of flesh or feeders upon herbs. So as we go 

 back in the past we And the lines now shai'])ly drawn between groups 

 of animals fading out, forms appearing unlike an}^ now living, and 

 animals becoming more generalized, as it is termed, more like one 

 another in internal structure, less fitted for some particular mode of 

 life or kind of food, although some of these strange forms survived 

 until a comparatively late date. Consequently it is more difficult to 

 recognize the entire form and relations of the early animals from 

 their scattered bones than it is those of the later arrivals upon the 

 earth, and thus it has happened that some of the attempts at recon- 

 structing the earlier and stranger forms have, in the light of more 

 complete knowledge, been found to be very far from the truth. 



In the Dinosaurs (terrible lizards), those great and ancient reptiles 

 that have been the l)asis of many and careful restorations, we have a 

 group of animals with which Cuvier was practicallj' unacquainted and 

 which in many ways differ from an}' other animals with which we are 

 familiar. How ditferent they are may be inferred from the fact that no 

 less an authority than Owen mistook the bones of the hip for those of 

 the shoulder of one of these creatures and so described and figured 

 them. And this is not to be held to his discredit, for at the time 

 almost nothing was known of the Dinosaurs, and while there is a pop- 

 ular belief that it is quite possible to reconstruct an entire animal from 

 one tooth or a single bone this is, unluckily, veiy^ far from the truth. 

 True, much may often be done with a bone or a tooth, but this is in 

 cases where these fragments are unmistakably like those of creatures 

 which we do know and with whose more or less complete structure we 

 are well acquainted. 



Probably the earliest restorations to be given to the general public 

 (those of Cuvier having been published in a scientific work of limited 



