500 MESOZOIC ERA— AGE OF EEPTILES. 



eight feet long. It was one of the hugest of the huge animals of this 

 order. 



Another strange Dinosaur of this time was the Diclonius mirabilis 

 of Cope (Fig. 839). This was a huge bipedal herbivore, thirty-eight 

 feet long, and head three and a half feet, with curious spoon-bill like 

 beak and magazines of numerous teeth (two thousand in all), somewhat 

 like those of the Hadrosaur (p. 485). 



Mammals. — The great gap between the Jurassic and Tertiary mam- 

 mals mentioned on page 492 has only very recently (1889) been partly 

 filled by the discovery by Marsh of twenty-four species of mammals 

 from the Laramie. The teeth of two of the most characteristic species 

 are given in Figs. 840 and 841. These very important discoveries of 



Fig. 840. Fig. 841. 



Figs. 840 and 841.— Laramie Mammals (after Marsh). 840. Cimolomys gracilis, x 3. 841. Halo- 

 don sculptus, x 2. 



Marsh were supposed to be unique. But during the present year 

 (1890) Lemoine has found at Cernay, France, a mammalian fauna in 

 which Metatheres, extremely similar to those of the Laramie, are asso- 

 ciated with Eutheres characteristic of the lowest Tertiary (Puerco- 

 beds).* Thus the connection of the Laramie with the Tertiary is made 

 still closer. But the gap still remains ; we still look in vain for the 

 progenitors of the Tertiary mammals. They will doubtless yet be 

 found in the Cretaceous and probably in the Laramie of this or pos- 

 sibly some other country, from which they migrated at the beginning 

 of the Tertiary. 



* Bulletin Geological Society of France, vol. xviii, pp. 219, 321 (1890). 



