April, igo6.] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



411 



New Dinosaurs. 



Therk seems to be considerable rivalry between New 

 York and Pittsburg, Pa., on the subject of the gigantic 

 reptiles of the Mesozoic age. Hardly had the former 

 town recovered from its ecstasy at the possession of 

 what it fondly believed to be the " biggest reptile on 

 record," in the person of the fine Brontosaurus, pre- 

 sented by Pierpont Morgan, than it learnt to its 

 chagrin that Pittsburg was still leading by a head and 

 about fifteen vertebrae — to be exact, by 17 feet 9 inches, 

 thanks to Andrew Carnegie's Diplodocus, the plaster 

 cast of whose skeleton we have all seen and admired at 

 the South Kensington Museum. Why, we may ask 

 parenthetically, do the Mesozoic reptiles exercise such 

 fascination over American millionaires? Is this an in- 

 stance of elective affinities ? Honours, however, are 

 now easy between the rival towns, for the latest ad- 

 dition to the American Museum of Natural History in 

 New York is the fossil remains of a Tyrannosaurus, 

 the largest carnivorous land animal yet discovered, and 

 the most ferocious monster of the Reptile Age. He 

 was nearly thirty feet shorter than the herbivorous 

 Brontosaurus, but was in every way more formidable, 

 and was distinguished from the other dinosaurs by his 

 agility, his superior brain, and his massive structure. 

 He had immense feet — four feet long by three feet 

 wide — and his total length was thirty-nine feet, while 

 some of his teeth measured as much as six inches. 



The first bones of Tyrannosaurus Rex, to give him 

 his full title, were brought to light as long ago as the 

 summer of 1902, at Hell Creek, in the bad lands of 

 Montana, which have proved a veritable graveyard of 

 prehistoric animals. During the summer of 1905, a 

 second expedition was dispatched to the same place 

 and a number of additional boneji were excavated from 

 a sandstone as hard as granite. The discovery com- 

 prised so many representative portions of the skeleton 

 of the great flesh-eating dinosaur that the general ap- 

 pearance of the animal can be described with some ap- 

 proach to accuracy. While we may lament the disap- 

 pearance of the placid Brontosaurus or the fragile 

 Diplodocus, we have every reason for congratulating 

 ourselves that Tyrannosaurus Rex is not our contem- 

 porary. He was practically a biped, with an agile, 

 bird-like manner of progression, the immense feet pos- 

 sessing three enormous toes projecting forward, and 

 one extending backward — all furnished with huge tear- 

 ing claws. The head is much larger than that of the 

 Brontosaur, and the great teeth are serrated and sharp- 

 edged. Tyrannosaurus seems to have come in about 

 the time that Brontosaurus went out — perhaps he 

 materially hastened the departure' of the latter. When 

 these monsters ro;imcd the eartli, Montana pos.scssed 

 a sub-tropical climate, not unlike that of the West 

 Indies to-day, the region including great seas of salt 

 or brackish water, the sedimentary remains of which 

 form the " bad lands " of our day. 



A curious point with regard to the recently discovered 

 plesiosaurian remains in Western Kansas, was the 

 reason for the large pebbles found in (he neighbourhood 

 of the extinct reptiles. These huge pebbles were found 

 inside the remains of the fossilised plcsiosaurs. and it 

 was alternatively suggested that the extinct monster 

 swallowed them as birds swallow small stones to aid 

 the gizzard in the processes of digestion, or that the 

 animal may have had some idea of increasing its 

 specific gravity by adding slones to its weight in order 

 to sink to tin- Icwl of llic nnid liollom where its food 



was found. It will be observed that doubt and even 

 ridicule have been thrown upon the supposed bird-like 

 digestive habits of these creatures. But according to 

 Professor S. W. Williston, the cumulative testimony of 

 writers both on this and the other side of the Atlantic 

 is quite conclusive. It has been assumed that the plesio- 

 saurs could not have utilised the pebbles as a means 

 of digestion in a muscular stomach. But the modern 

 crocodiles have a real, bird-like, and muscular gizzard; 

 and it is believed that they have a similar habit. ."Xt 

 any rate the habit has been imputed to them, and it is 

 not stretching theory too far to believe that the plcsio- 

 saurs had similar muscular gizzard-like stomachs and 

 originated the pebble-swallowing habit. The special 

 plesiosaur with which the habit is associated is the 

 Eldsmosaunis, which of all animals either past or present 

 had the longest neck recorded. It had no fewer than 

 fifty-eight vertebrae in this portion of its frame, and its 

 total length of neck may be modestly estimated at 

 twenty-three feet. The length of its trunk was nine 

 feet, of its tail eight feet — a great contrast to the 

 'Diplodocus. The extreme length of the largest-known 

 specimen was probably sixty feet. .\s to the habits of 

 these long-necked plesiosaurs in life, it seems most 

 probable that they were general scavengers, usually 

 living in shallow waters. 



Arv Ancient Ma-zer: An Old 

 WaLSsa.il Bowl. 



By Barr-Brown. 



A M.\ZER of great antiquity is now used as an alms dish 

 in St. John's Church, Glastonbury. It is one of the 

 most beautiful and ornate examples in existence. It 

 has been described as a " brass or latvn-howl." It is 



An Ancient Latyn Dish, 



circular in form and in diameter is sixteen and a half 

 inches. The flat rim is two inches broad and its " de- 

 pressed inside seven-eighths of an inch in depth." Oit 

 the f.ice of the rim are two borders a little indented one 

 within the other. In the centre or bottom of the dish 



