RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS 63 
der blades are precisely like those of a whale, 
while the vertebre are different from those 
of any other animal, even its own cousin and 
lesser contemporary Dorudon. ‘There were 
also tiny hind legs tucked away beneath skin, 
but these, as well as many other parts of the 
animal’s structure were unknown, until Mr. 
Charles Schuchert collected a series of speci- 
mens for the National Museum, from which it 
was possible to restore the entire skeleton. 
Owing to a rather curious circumstance the 
first attempt at a restoration was at fault; 
among the bones originally obtained by Mr. 
Schuchert there were none from the last half 
of the tail, an old gully having cut off the 
hinder portion of the backbone and destroyed 
the vertebre. Not far away, however, was a 
big lump of stone containing several vertebre 
of just the right size, and these were used as 
models to complete the papier-maché skeleton 
shown at Atlanta, in 1894, But a year after 
Mr. Schuchert collected a series of vertebra, 
beginning with the tip of the tail, and these 
showed conclusively that the first lot of tail 
vertebre belonged to a creature still unde- 
