

MODERN HORSES 97 
The skeletons exhibited in these halls are of animals which lived from 
30,000 to 20,000,000 years ago. ‘To prepare a specimen for exhibition 
the matrix in which the bones are imbedded is carefully chipped away 
and the missing parts restored in cement and plaster. The bones are 
then assembled as in life. In the specimens on exhibition the restored 
parts differ in color from the original parts of the skeleton and can 
readily be distinguished. 
As a whole, the Museum collections of fossil vertebrates are believed 
to be the finest in the world, if we take into consideration not merely 
numbers, but also variety, quality and perfected methods of preparation 
and exhibition. The collections illustrating the evolution of the horse 
are probably equal to those of all other institutions combined. The 
collections of Permian reptiles, of Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs, of 
turtles, of North American Tertiary mammals, and of extinct mammals 
of South America, are likewise of the first rank. There are more than 
ninety complete skeletons on exhibition, several hundred skulls and 
nearly two thousand jaws or other parts of various species. About ten 
times this number are in storage, reserved for study and research, or 
not yet prepared for exhibition. 
East CorrIDOR 
FOSSIL FISHLIKE LIZARDS 
Directly in front of the elevator is a wall case in which the most 
recently acquired specimens are placed. The cases attached to the wall 
near the stairway contain specimens of huge marine fishlike lizards, 
which show the tremendous pressure to which fossils are often subjected 
and the fragmentary condition in which they are found. 
SouTH rere eae 
HALL OF THE AGE OF MAN 
The South Pavilion is devoted to early man, represented by a series 
of casts of the more noteworthy specimens, and to his contemporaries, 
the mammoths and mastodons and the giant ground sloths of South 
America. 
On the left is a series of modern skeletons illustrating the evolution 
of the horse under the hand of man. Here are such extremes as the Shet- 
land pony, only two feet ten inches high, and the rough-boned draught 
Skeletons horse, which stands six feet one inch in height. Contrast 
of Modern these with the slender-limbed “Sysonby”’ the famous race 
Horses 
horse, and the Arabian stallion ‘Nimr.’”’ The horse 
