i 3 4 EXTINCT MONSTERS 



labours of Professors Buckland, Phillips, Owen, and Marsh 

 may be regarded as the type of the carnivorous Dinosaurs ; and 

 it affords an excellent and instructive instance of the gradual 

 restoration of the skeleton of a new monster from more or less 

 fragmentary remains. Certain very excusable errors were at first 

 made in the restoration, but these have since been rectified by 

 a comparison with the allied American forms, such as Allosaurus 

 (see Plate XV.), of which nearly entire skeletons have of late been 

 discovered in strata of Jurassic age in fact, the same rock in 



FIG. 43. Skeleton of Megalosaurus, restored from the English Oolites. 



Colorado as that in which the huge Atlantosaurus bones lay hid. 

 The accompanying woodcut (Fig. 43) shows how the skeleton has 

 been restored in the light of these later discoveries of Professor 

 Marsh. The large bones of the limbs were hollow, and many 

 of the vertebrae, as well as some of those of the feet, contained 

 cavities, or were otherwise lightened in order to give a greater 

 power of rapid movement. 



It is not very difficult to imagine a Megalosaur lying in wait 

 for his prey (perhaps a slender, harmless little mammal of the 



