RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS 57 
to the best authenticated reports of the sea- 
serpent. Among other possibilities it has been 
suggested that some animal believed to be ex- 
tinct had really lived over to the present day. 
Now there are a few waifs, spared from the 
wrecks of ancient faunas, stranded on the 
shores of the present, such as the Australian 
Ceratodus and the Gar Pikes of North Amer- 
ica, and these and all other creatures that could 
be mustered in were used as proofs to sustain 
this theory. If, it was said, these animals 
have been spared, why not others? If a fish 
of such ancient lineage as the Gar Pike is so 
common as to be a nuisance, why may there 
not be a few Plesiosaurs or a Mosasaur some- 
where in the depths of the ocean? The argu- 
ment was a good one, the more that we may 
“suppose” almost anything, but it must be 
said that no trace of any of these creatures has 
so far been found outside of the strata in which 
they have long been known to occur, and all 
the probabilities are opposed to this theory. 
Still, if some of these creatures had been spared, 
they might well have passed for sea-serpents, 
even though Zeuglodon, the one most like a 
