4 The Alligator and Its Allies 
animals, this fact does not in the least diminish the 
intense interest in the individual members of the 
order. 
ANCESTRY 
Although the huge dragon-like dinosaurs or 
‘terrible reptiles,’ some of which were probably 
more than one hundred feet long, became extinct 
during the Mesozoic epoch, perhaps millions of 
years before man made his appearance upon earth, 
we have one group of reptiles still living in certain 
parts of the earth of which the Mesozoic lords of 
creation need not feel ashamed. While most of 
the living Crocodilia are mere pigmies in size, 
compared to the Atlantosaurus, there are a few 
representatives of the living group, to be discussed 
later, that are said to reach a length of thirty feet, 
which length makes pigmies, in turn, of most of 
the other living reptiles. 
Considering the extinct as well as the living 
Crocodilia, Gadow says it is very difficult to sepa- 
rate them from the Dinosauria. In the Mesozoic 
Crocodilia the fore limbs were much shorter and 
weaker than the hind limbs, as was often the case 
with the dinosaurs; they were almost entirely 
marine, but gave indications of descent from ter- 
restrial forms. 
Various facts point, thinks Gadow, ‘“‘to some 
Theropodous Dinosaurian stock of which the Croc- 
