216 THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 



Ichthyosanr and his contemporaries, for we can see 

 that they were admirably fitted for the work they had 

 in hand ; but we can see that had man been so un- 

 fortunate as to have lived in their days, he might have 

 been anything but the lord of creation. 



But there were sea-serpents as well as other mon- 

 sters in the Mesozoic seas. Many years ago the Lower 

 Cretaceous beds of St. Peter's Mount, near Maesfcricht, 

 afibrded a skull three feet in length, of massive pro- 

 portions, and furnished with strong conical teeth, to 

 which the name Mosasaurus Camperi was given. The 

 skull and other parts of the skeleton found with it, 

 were held to indicate a large aquatic reptile, but its 

 precise position in its class was long a subject of dis- 

 pute. Faujas held it to be a crocodile ; Camper, 

 Ouvier, and Owen regarded it as a gigantic lizard. 

 More recently, additional specimens, especially those 

 found in the Cretaceous formations of North America, 

 have thrown new light upon its structure, and have 

 shown it to present a singular combination of the cha- 

 racter of serpents, lizards, and of the great sea saurians 

 already referred to. Some parts of the head and the 

 articulation of the jaws, in important points resemble 

 those of serpents, while in other respects the head is 

 that of a gigantic lizard. The body and tail are 

 greatly lengthened out, having more than a hundred 

 vertebral joints, and in one of the larger species at- 

 taining the length of eighty feet. The trunk itself is 

 much elongated, and with ribs like those of a snake. 

 There are no walking feet, but a pair of fins or paddles 



