49 



Knowledge & 5cientif ic News 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Conducted by MAJOR B. BADEN-POWELL, F.R.A.S., and E. S. GREW, M.A. 



Vol. IV. No. 3. 



[new series.] MARCH, 1907. 



LStationers' Hall 



.] 



SIXPENCE NET. 



CONTENTS.-See page V. 



An Extraordinary Reptile. 



By R. Lydekker. 



Thanks to the authorities of the United States National 

 Museum at Washington, the British public will shortly 

 have the opportunity of seeing, in the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington, a restored model of the 

 skeleton of what may well be termed the most extra- 

 ordinary representative of that wonderful group of 

 extinct land reptiles, the Dinosauria. It is not that the 

 Triceratops (as the creature was appropriately named 

 by the late Professor O. C. Marsh, of Vale College) is 

 remarkable on account of its vast bodily size, for in 

 this respect it is not in the running with the giant 

 Diplodocus, whose skeleton was set up a few years ago 

 in the reptile gallery of the museum. Neither does it 

 lay claim to admiration and astonishment on account 

 of walking on its hind legs with its head raised sixteen 

 feet high in the air like its cousin the Iguanodon. On 

 the contrary, Triceratops, so far as bodily size and gait 

 are concerned, has no claim to special distinction, its 

 total length falling just short of a score of feet, while it 

 walked on all fours very much in the fashion of an un- 

 usually long-limbed crocodile. 



What, however, it lacks in these respects, the three- 

 horned dinosaur, as it may be designated in the vernacu- 

 lar, more than makes up for in the extraordinary con- 

 formation and huge size of its skull. It enjoys, in fact, 

 the distinction of having, both absolutely and relatively, 

 the largest head of any known land animal either living 

 or extinct, and to find a parallel in this respect we 

 must look to the members of the whale tribe, in some 

 of which the relative size of the head is, however, still 

 greater. 



The horned dinosaurs, of which those commonly 

 designated Ceratops and Triceratops are the best 

 known, were described by Professor Marsh in a series 

 of papers published in the American 1 ournal of Science 

 between 1888 and 1894, inclusive. Their remains oc- 

 cur in the upper Cretaceous beds along the eastern 

 flanks of the Rocky Mountains for a distance of about 

 eight hundred miles, but are more abundant than else- 

 where in Wyoming, and more especially Converse 

 County, where the original of the skeleton forming the 

 subject of the present article was discovered. As an 

 indication of the abundance of these remains in the 

 district in question, it may be mentioned that some 

 years ago a single investigator collected bones refer- 

 able to no less than forty distinct individuals. The 

 Ceratops beds, as they are called, are of fresh-water, or 

 brackish, origin, but rest in some places on marine 

 strata. As they occur some distance below the top- 

 most Cretaceous, their age may be approximately corre- 

 lated with the highest beds of our chalks, so that the 



horned dinosaurs lived at a much later epoch than the 

 majority of the giant herbivorous dinosaurs, which 

 flourished during the Oolitic and Wealden epochs. By 

 some palaeontologists it has been considered probable 

 that the horned dinosaurs of North America were re- 

 presented by allied types in the upper Cretaceous of 

 Continental Europe, but by others the correctness of 

 this identification is disputed, and the group is regarded 

 as peculiar to America. 



The skeleton, of which the model sent to this country 

 is a replica, forms one of the most striking objects in 

 the court devoted to vertebrate palaeontology in the 

 museum at Washington, and is the first of itskind that 

 has hitherto been mounted. When discovered, it was 

 far from complete, and it accordingly became necessary 

 to restore the missing bones. So far as possible these 

 missing parts were supplied by selecting- bones from 

 other skeletons of the same approximate size, but when 

 this proved impracticable, as was the case in a few 

 instances, the bones required were modelled in plaster. 

 The skeleton is, therefore, confessedly in some degree 

 a " fake," although the restoration is believed to be 

 practically true to nature. It need scarcely be added 

 that, except on sentimental grounds, the model is in 

 every way as good as the original, although there are 

 doubtless persons who, when they learn this, will ex- 

 claim : " Oh, but it isn't real," and will thereupon 

 cease to take any further interest in the specimen. 



As mounted, the skeleton measures 19 feet S inches 

 from the front of the curious, toothless beak to the tip 

 of the tail; while at the loins it stands S feet 2 inches. 

 In addition to the skull, which is 6 feet long, or nearly 

 one-third the total length, the most noteworthy features 

 of the skeleton are its great relative height at the loins, 

 the extremely short and deep body (shaped more like 

 that of a mammal than that of a crocodile), the tall and 

 massive limbs, and the curious turtle-like flexure of the 

 fore-feet. Unfortunately, it was found impossible to 

 determine the exact proportions of the front horn in 

 this particular species, so that it was deemed necessar) 

 to omit in the restoration this very characteristic 

 feature, upon which the generic name Triceratops is in 

 part based. 



In addition to its great absolute and relative 

 the skull is specially characterised by the pi. 

 three horns, one in front ami two behind; the hind pair 

 being strikingly like the horn-cores of a gigantic r>X. 

 Indeed, so ox-like arc these horns that a pair was 

 actually described as indicating a Cretaceous bison. 

 Equally peculiar is the presence of a cutting I 

 formed by a separate bone in each jaw. More striking 

 still is the presence of a great hon\ curtain or frill (like 

 the flange of a fireman's helmet) overhanging the neck, 

 and thus rendering the relative length of the skull 

 greater in respeel to the rest of the skeleton than it 

 really is. Both the horns and the curtain are con- 

 sidered by Professor Marsh to have been covered in 

 life with a thick layer of horn. 



