THE HISTORY OF LIFE 193 



One of the distinctive features of the Triassic system 

 is the remarkable creation of amphibians and reptiles. 

 Wonderful carnivorous reptiles appear, distinguished 

 by having three sets of teeth. Others had no teeth, 

 or but a long tusk-like pair of teeth, the jaws 

 being prolonged into a horny beak. These early 

 reptiles present characters connecting them with birds 

 on one hand and mammals on the other, and the size 

 and unwieldiness of some gave them a resemblance to 

 the elephants and rhinoceroses of modern times. "They 

 appear to have walked mainly on their strong hind 

 legs, the prints of their hind feet occurring in great 

 abundance among the red sandstones of Connecticut. 

 Many of them had three bird-like toes, and left foot- 

 prints quite like those of birds. Others had four or 

 even five toes, and attained an enormous size, for a 

 single footprint sometimes measures twenty inches in 

 length." 1 The earliest types of crocodiles now are 

 found in these rocks. 



The first evidence of Mammalian life, that is, animals 

 which suckle their young, appears in these strata. They 

 were of the lowest type, allies either of the duck- 

 billed platypus, the kangaroo, or opossum. 



The Triassic rocks are found in Britain, Scandinavia, 

 in the Western Alps, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North 

 America. 



Lying on and deposited after the Triassic rocks is 

 found a series of strata, called by geologists the 

 Jurassic rocks. Nearly all over the world are these 

 rocks found. 



The plants in this formation are mostly those which 



i "Text-Book of Geology," Sir Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., 3rd 

 edition, 1893, p. 863. 







