60 We Explore Dead Lodge Canyon 



the ventral ribs. In order to rest on these he 

 must have been able to flex his limbs like a living 

 Sphenodon, or New Zealand lizard (eighteen 

 inches or more in length) does. This seems a 

 more reasonable pose to me than the one usually 

 given Cretaceous carniverous dinosaurs. I can- 

 not believe he always made a conspicuous object 

 of himself when he was hunting over the grassy 

 and rushy plains for his prey, the herbiverous 

 dinosaurs. I would rather think he slunk along 

 their spoor or the trails, they had beaten through 

 the rank vegetation, as a tiger would crawl up 

 on his victim. So I picture him, when I try to 

 put life into his old dry bones. It has been the 

 habit of paleontologists to make a composite ani- 

 mal of a dinosaur, with characters of birds, mam- 

 mals and reptiles. Several trachodonts and 

 horned dinosaurs I have seen painted, with a 

 thick rhinoceros-like skin, when we now know 

 they had scales patterned after the Gila Monster 

 of Arizona today as far as the scales go. The 

 bones on the underside of the tail, called chev- 

 rons, are shaped like runners, as if to carry out 

 my belief, that he dragged his tail behind him 

 like a lizard of today. What was his ventral 

 armor for, if not to protect the vital organs 

 from the hard tough rushes and swamp grass of 

 his habitat? What would be the use of the ven- 

 tral ribs otherwise? From my work in shop and 

 quarry, I am convinced these great reptiles will 

 be treated and posed as lizards some day. Now 



