58 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 
serpent in form, was the one most remotely re- 
lated to snakes. 
Zeuglodon, the yoke-tooth, so named from 
the shape of its great cutting teeth, was in- 
deed a strange animal, and if we wonder at 
the Greenland Whale, whose head is one-third 
its total length, we may equally wonder at 
Zeuglodon, with four feet of head, ten feet of 
body, and forty feet of tail. No one, seeing 
the bones of the trunk and tail for the first 
time, would suspect that they belonged to the 
same animal, for while the vertebre of the 
body are of moderate size, those of the tail 
are, for the bulk of creature, the longest 
known, measuring from fifteen to eighteen 
inches in length, and weighing in a fossil con- 
dition fifty to sixty pounds. In life, the ani- 
mal was from fifty to seventy feet in length, 
and not more than six or eight feet through 
the deepest part of the body, while the tail 
was much less; the head was small and 
pointed, the jaws well armed with grasping 
and cutting teeth, and just back of the head 
was a pair of short paddles, not unlike those 
of a fur seal. It is curious to speculate on 
