Animals Before Man 



middle of the ankle itself, and this is a character 

 shared by these two divisions of animals, and, 

 aside from a few other reptiles, not possessed 

 by other animals. And while nowadays birds 

 have a toothless beak and a tail containing 

 very few bones, there was a time in the past 

 when they had teeth and long tails, and resem- 

 bled reptiles more than they do now. 



We are so apt to think of dinosaurs as great 

 reptiles stalking about on their hind legs, that it 

 may be well to recall that some were small, and 

 that many went about on all-fours like the 

 crocodiles. And both are thought to have had 

 a common ancestor in the shape of some belo- 

 dont,* which accounts for the similarity between 

 belodon, crocodile, and dinosaur. Ordinarily 

 we think of crocodiles as rather clumsy crea- 

 tures when on land, crawling around in a slow, 

 lumbering fashion ; but Mr. Hornaday, who has 

 hunted and killed various species of crocodiles 

 in various parts of the world, states that the 

 great Indian crocodile, the mugger of Kipling, 

 walks away with his body and the greater part 



* See the previous chapter. 

 146 



