26 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



wondered at that these three-toed tracks, great and 

 small, were almost universally believed to be those of 

 birds. So it is greatly to the credit of Dr. Deane, who 

 also studied these footprints, that he was led to suspect 

 that they might have been made by other animals. 

 This suspicion was partly caused by the occasional 

 association of four and five-toed prints with the three- 

 toed impressions, and partly by the rare occurrence of 

 imprints showing the texture of the sole of the foot, 

 which was quite different from that of any known bird. 



In the light of our present knowledge we are able to 

 read many things in these tracks that were formerly 

 more or less obscure, and to see in them a complete 

 verification of Dr. Deane's suspicion that they were not 

 made by birds. We see clearly that the long tracks 

 called Anomoepus, with their accompanying short fore 

 feet, mark where some Dinosaur squatted down to rest 

 or progressed slowly on all-fours, as does the kangaroo 

 when feeding quietly ;i and we interpret the curious 

 heart-shaped depression sometimes seen back of the feet, 

 not as the mark of a stubby tail, but as made by the 

 ends of the slender pubes, bones that help form the hip- 

 joints. Then, too, the mark of the inner, or short first, 

 toe, is often very evident, although it was a long time 

 before the bones of this toe were actually found, and 

 many of the Dinosaurs now known to have four toes 

 were supposed to have but three. 



It seems strange, and it is strange, that while so 

 many hundreds of tracks should have been found in the 

 limited area exposed to view, so few bones have been 

 found — our knowledge of the veritable animals that 



'It is to be noted that a leaping kangaroo touches the ground neither 

 with his heel nor his tail, but that between jumps he rests momentarily 

 on his toes only; hence impressions made by any creature that jumped 

 like a kangaroo would be very short. 



