48 TREE ANCESTORS 



although the lizard tailed bird or Archaeopteryx the missing Knk 

 between birds and reptiles haunted the reefs of Solnhofen in Bavaria 

 at this time. Somewhat later we fmd the curious toothed birds 

 of western North America. Sea-inhabiting reptiles of gigantic 

 size, long necked, sea serpent-like plesiosaurs and dolphin-like 

 ichthyosaurs, land inhabiting dinosaurs (the name means terrible 

 lizard) of immense size and bizarre form were the dominant crea- 

 tures, while the noble class of mammals with man at their summit 

 was still but a promise and, so far as the fossils indicate, represented 

 by only a few forms of mouse-like size. The continents had not 

 yet assumed their modern forms. Such great mountain chains 

 as the Andes, Alps, Himalayas and Rockies had not been elevated ; 

 and yet the sequoia flourished and its cones then were not very 

 different from those grown in California at the present time. 



The next succeeding geological period, the Cretaceous, continued 

 to be the age of gigantic reptiles. Occasional bones and teeth of 

 these and other related creatures are found in the marl beds that 

 were deposited in the shallow seas along the eastern coast of those 

 days, and still more are found in the chalky deposits of the Creta- 

 ceous sea which then covered our great plains country. The Mis- 

 sissippi valley was a part of a great gulf that extended northward 

 from the present Gulf of Mexico almost to the Arctic Circle, and 

 which was a veritable summer sea, peopled with gigantic sea-liz- 

 ards, mosasaurs, and with a host of strange forms. Flying reptiles 

 with a spread of fifteen to twenty feet circled overhead. 



The vegetation, however, particularly during Upper Cretaceous 

 times began to assume a more modern aspect and we find along 

 with ancient types of ferns, broad leafed conifers and juniper-like 

 evergreens, numerous leaves of willows, figs, magnohas and sassa- 

 fras. The earhest known palms as well as the first leaves of many 

 of our modern hardwoods date from this time. The Cretaceous 

 clays that skirt Raritan Bay in New Jersey aboimd with these 

 layers of leaves, as do also the Dakota sandstone of the middle 

 west. The fine sequoia with the large cone and needle-like curved 

 leaves figured is from clays near Cliffwood, New Jersey, where the 

 twugs are among the most abundant fossils, looking like elegant 



