Fossils. 
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rightly, with folded wings, or perched on trees, or 
climbing along cliffs with its hooked claws and feet. 
The smaller ones lived on insects, but the larger 
probably pounced on struggling reptiles, or, diving into 
the water, preyed on fish. More than twenty species 
of the pterodactyls have been discovered. Poets have 
long pictured to us a flying dragon of the oldest time, 
which played a conspicuous part in pagan mythology. 
It breathed lire, and disputed with man the possession 
of the earth. In the Jurassic times we find the 
realization of this creature of poetic fancy, but it is 
only an uncouth reptile, utterly unworthy of those 
fabled conflicts in which gods and heroes shared. 
(4) Dinosaurs (terrible lizards) were land reptiles 
of enormous size that roamed elephant-like over the 
river-plains, or browsed in the forests of Lower 
Mesozoic times. These included the megalosaur 
(tylceosaur and iguanodon, etc., huge monsters from 
forty to seventy feet in length. The megalosaur was 
carnivorous, having teeth curved backward like a prun- 
ing-knife, and with a double edge of enamel so as to 
cut like a sabre equally on each side. The iguanodon 
was herbivorous, twigs having been found fossilized 
in its stomach, and its teeth often being half- worn to 
the roots. A party of twenty-one scientific men, at the 
invitation of Dr. Hawkins, once took dinner within the 
restored body of this animal. On that occasion Prof. 
Owen, the celebrated palaeontologist, sat in the head for 
brains ! This model contained 650 bushels of artificial 
