VII 



THE DINOSAURS 



"Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great andsmall." 



A few million years ago, geologists and physicists do 

 not agree upon the exact number, although both agree 

 upon the millions, when the Rocky Mountains were not 

 yet born and the now bare and arid western plains a 

 land of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegetation, the 

 region was inhabited by a race of strange and mighty 

 reptiles upon whom science has bestowed the appro- 

 priate name of Dinosaurs, or terrible lizards. 



Our acquaintance with the Dinosaurs is com- 

 paratively recent, dating from the early part of the 

 nineteenth century, and in America, at least, the date 

 may be set at 1818, when the first Dinosaur remains 

 were found in the Valley of the Connecticut, although 

 they naturally were not recognized as such, nor had the 

 term been devised. The first Dinosaur to be formally 

 recognized as representing quite a new order of reptiles 

 was the carnivorous Megalosaur, found near Oxford, 

 England, in 1824. 



The scientific name Dinosauria was used by Richard 

 Owen in 1842, but I do not know when it became 

 anglicized as Dinosaur. 



For a long time our knowledge of Dinosaurs was very 

 imperfect and literally fragmentary, depending mostly 

 upon scattered teeth, isolated vertebrae, or fragments of 

 bone picked up on the surface or casually encountered 

 in some mine or quarry. Now, however, thanks mainly 

 to the labors of American palaeontologists, thanks also 

 to the rich deposits of fossils in our Western States, we 

 have an extensive knowledge of the Dinosaurs, of their 

 size, structure, habits, and general appearance. 



81 



