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 still 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 
