INTRODUCTION 



II 



or even some part of the human body, Ijecause of fancied resem- 

 blances in shape and size. Not too emphatically can it be said 

 that anything dug from the earth having the shape of a living ani- 

 mal and alleged to be petrified is either an accidental resemblance 

 or a deliberate humbug — if we except such extraordinary casts as 

 those of Pompeii. The Cardiff Giant and the Muldoon are still 

 fresh in the memory of some of us. There have been a few instances 

 where flesh has been preserved in the North, frozen for thousands 



Fig. 2. — Removing a specimen of fish in a block from the chalk of western Kansas 



of years, but frozen fossils are very different from petrified fossils. 

 Flesh decays before it possibly can be petrified, and only rarely 

 is the residue of flesh, tendons, and skin, that is, the carbon and 

 mineral matters, preserved. 



One may sometimes restore extinct animals as in life, knowing 

 fully the shape and structure of the skeleton, and still be far from 

 the real truth. All elephants of the present time have a bare or 

 nearly bare skin. If all that we knew of the extinct mammoth 

 were derived from the skt-lcton we should never have suspected 



I 



