RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS 45 



manatee, and the shoulder blades are precisely like those 

 of a whale, while the vertebrae are different from those 

 of any other animal, even its own cousin and lesser 

 contemporary Dorudon. There were also tiny hind legs 

 tucked away beneath skin, but these, as well as many 

 other parts of the animal's structure were unknown, 

 until Mr. Charles Schuchert collected a series of speci- 

 mens for the National Museum, from which it was pos- 

 sible to restore the entire skeleton. Owing to a rather 

 curious circumstance the first attempt at a restoration 

 was at fault; among the bones originally obtained by 

 Mr. Schuchert there were none from the last half of the 

 tail, an old gully having cut off the hinder portion of the 

 backbone and destroyed the vertebrae. Not far away, 

 however, was a big lump of stone containing several 

 vertebrae of just the right size, and these were used as 

 models to complete the papier-mache skeleton shown at 

 Atlanta, in 1894. But a year after Mr. Schuchert col- 

 lected a series of vertebrae, beginning with the tip of the 

 tail, and these showed conclusively that the first lot of 

 tail vertebrae belonged to a creature still undescribed 

 and one probably more like a whale than Zeuglodon him- 

 self, whose exact relationships are a little uncertain, as 

 may be imagined from what was said of its structure. 

 Mixed with the bones of Zeuglodon was the shell of a 

 turtle, nearly three feet long, and part of the backbone 

 of a great water-snake that must have been twenty-five 

 feet long, both previously quite unknown. One more 

 curious thing about Zeuglodon bones remains to be told, 

 and then we are done with him; ordinarily a fossil bone 

 will break indifferently in any direction, but the bones of 

 Zeuglodon are built, like an onion, of concentric layers, 

 and these have a great tendency to peel off during the 

 preparation of a specimen. 



