American Museum of Natural History, 

 department of vertebrate paleontology. 



Provisional Guide 



TO THE 



Hall of Fossil Vertebrates, 



(No. 402, Fourth Floor, East Wing.) 



Edition of 1900-1901. 



The collections in this hall are not yet complete nor permanently arranged. 



We cannot therefore issue a guide-book at present. 



The arrangement of the specimens is intended to 

 show the history or evolution of different races of 

 animals, chiefly in North America. All the specimens of one 

 race or kind of animal are ])laced together, the most ancient 

 first, the most recent last. 



All the skeletons in this hall are those of extinct 



animals. The Mastodo?i and Great Irish Deer are half-petrified 



bone dug out of peat bogs. All the others are petrified (/. e., 



have been buried so long that they are converted from bone into 



stone), and have been chiseled out of the solid rock. The 



Megatherium is a plaster cast. 



Some of the skeletons are partly restored in plaster, indicated by a red 

 cross (restored bones) or red lines (outlines of restored parts of bones). Bones 

 supplied from other specimens are marked with the catalogue number of the 

 specimen, or indicated by a red circle if uncatalogued. 



The most ancient of the extinct animals shown here 



are the Dinosaurs or great land Reptiles, Mosasaurs or great 



