104 AGE OF MAN 



Many of 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, quaUty 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 

 seventy 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 PAVILION 



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 Modem these with the slender-limbed "Sysonby" the famous race 

 Horses horse, and the Arabian stallion "Nimr". The horse 



