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DINOSAURS
With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections
by
W. D. MATTHEW
Curator of Vertebrate Palæontology
... '_Dragons of the prime
That tare each other in their slime_'
[Illustration: SKULL OF THE GREAT CARNIVOROUS DINOSAUR
TYRANNOSAURUS IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM.]
New York
American Museum of Natural History
1915
DINOSAURS.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. The Age of Reptiles. Its Antiquity, Duration
and Significance in Geological History. 9
CHAPTER II. North America in the Age of Reptiles.
Its Geographic and Climatic Changes. 16
CHAPTER III. Kinds of Dinosaurs. Common Characters and
Differences between the various Groups.
Classification. 25
CHAPTER IV. The Carnivorous Dinosaurs--Allosaurus,
Tyrannosaurus, Ornitholestes, etc. 33
CHAPTER V. The Amphibious Dinosaurs--Brontosaurus,
Diplodocus, etc. 60
CHAPTER VI. The Beaked Dinosaurs.
The Iguanodonts--Iguanodon, Camptosaurus. 75
CHAPTER VII. The Beaked Dinosaurs (continued). The
Duckbilled Dinosaurs--Trachodon, Saurolophus. 82
CHAPTER VIII. The Beaked Dinosaurs (continued). The
Armored Dinosaurs--Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus. 101
CHAPTER IX. The Beaked Dinosaurs (concluded). The
Horned Dinosaurs--Triceratops, etc. 107
CHAPTER X. Geographical Distribution of Dinosaurs. 114
CHAPTER XI. Collecting Dinosaurs. How and Where they are
Found. The First Discovery of Dinosaurs in
the West. The Bone-Cabin Quarry. Fossil
Hunting by Boat in Canada. 116
PREFACE.
This volume is in large part a reprint of various popular descriptions
and notices in the American Museum Journal and elsewhere by Professor
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mr. Barnum Brown, and the writer. There has
been a considerable demand for these articles which are now mostly out
of print. In reprinting it seemed best to combine and supplement them
so as to make a consecutive and intelligible account of the Dinosaur
collections in the Museum. The original notices are quoted verbatim;
for the remainder of the text the present writer is responsible.
Professor S.W. Williston of Chicago University has kindly contributed
a chapter--all too brief--describing the first discoveries of
dinosaurs in the Western formations that have since yielded so large a
harvest.
The photographs of American Museum specimens are by Mr. A.E. Anderson;
the field photographs by various Museum expeditions; the restorations
by Mr. Charles R. Knight. Most of these illustrations have been
published elsewhere by Professor Osborn, Mr. Brown and others. The
diagrams, figs. 1-9, 24, 25, 37 and 40, are my own.
W. D. M.
CHAPTER I.
THE AGE OF REPTILES.
ITS ANTIQUITY, DURATION AND SIGNIFICANCE IN GEOLOGIC HISTORY.
Palæontology deals with the History of Life. Its time is measured in
geologic epochs and periods, in millions of years instead of
centuries. Man, by this measure, is but a creature of yesterday--his
"forty centuries of civilization"[1] but a passing episode. It is by
no means easy for us to adjust our perspective to the immensely long
spaces of time involved in geological evolution. We are apt to think
of all these extinct animals merely as prehistoric--to imagine them
all living at the same time and contending with our cave-dwelling
ancestors for the mastery of the earth.
In order to understand the place of the Dinosaurs in world-history, we
must first get some idea of the length of geologic periods and the
immense space of time separating one extinct fauna from another.
_The Age of Man._ Prehistoric time, as it is commonly understood, is
the time when barbaric and savage tribes of men inhabited the world
but before civilization began, and earlier than the written records on
which history is based. This corresponds roughly to the Pleistocene
epoch of geology; it is included along with the much shorter time
during which civilization has existed, in the latest and shortest of
the geological periods, the Quaternary. It was the age of the mammoth
and the mastodon, the megatherium and Irish deer and of other
quadrupeds large and small which are now extinct; but most of its
animals were the same species as now exist. It was marked by the great
episode of the Ice Age, when considerable parts of the earth's surface
were buried under immense accumulations of ice, remnants of which are
still with us in the icy covering of Greenland and Antarctica.
_The Age of Mammals._ Before this period was a very much longer
one--at least thirty times as long--during which modern quadrupeds
were slowly evolving from small and primitive ancestors into their
present variety of form and size. This is the Tertiary Period or Age
of Mammals. Through this long period we can trace step by step the
successive stages through which the ancestors of horses, camels,
elephants, rhinoceroses, etc., were gradually converted into their
present form in adaptation to their various habits and environment.
And with them were slowly evolved various kinds of quadrupeds whose
descendants do not now exist, the Titanotheres, Elotheres, Oreodonts,
etc., extinct races which have not survived to our time. Man, as such,
had not yet come into existence, nor are we able to trace any direct
and complete line of ancestry among the fossil species known to us;
but his collateral ancestors were represented by the fossil species
of monkeys and lemurs of the Tertiary period.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--The Later Ages of Geologic Time.]
_The Age of Reptiles._ Preceding the Age of Mammals lies a long vista
of geologic periods of which the later ones are marked by the
dominance of Reptiles, and are grouped together as the Age of Reptiles
or Mesozoic Era. This was the reign of the Dinosaurs, and in it we are
introduced to a world of life so different from that of today that we
might well imagine ourselves upon another planet.
None of the ordinary quadrupeds with which we are familiar then
existed, nor any related to nor resembling them. But in their place
were reptiles large and small, carnivorous and herbivorous, walking,
swimming and even flying.
_Crocodiles, Turtles and Sea Reptiles._ The Crocodiles and Turtles of
the swamps were not so very different from their modern descendants;
there were also sea-crocodiles, sea-turtles, huge marine lizards
(Mosasaurs) with flippers instead of feet; and another group of great
marine reptiles (Plesiosaurs) somewhat like sea-turtles but with long
neck and toothed jaws and without any carapace. These various kinds of
sea-reptiles took the place of the great sea mammals of modern times
(which were evolved during the Age of Mammals); of whales and
dolphins, seals and walruses, and manatees.
_Pterodactyls._ The flying Reptiles or Pterosaurians, partly took the
place of birds, and most of them were of small size. Strange
bat-winged creatures, the wing membrane stretched on the enormously
elongated fourth finger, they are of all extinct reptiles the least
understood, the most difficult to reconstruct and visualize as they
were in life.
_Dinosaurs._ The land reptiles were chiefly Dinosaurs, a group which
flourished throughout the Age of Reptiles and became extinct at its
close. "Dinosaur" is a general term which covers as wide a variety in
size and appearance as "Quadruped" among modern animals. And the
Dinosaurs in the Age of Reptiles occupied about the same place in
nature as the larger quadrupeds do today. They have been called the
Giant Reptiles, for those we know most about were gigantic in size,
but there were also numerous smaller kinds, the smallest no larger
than a cat. All of them had short, compact bodies, long tails, and
long legs for a reptile, and instead of crawling, they walked or ran,
sometimes upon all fours, more generally upon the hind limbs, like
ostriches, the long tail balancing the weight of the body. Some modern
lizards run this way on occasion, especially if they are in a hurry.
But the bodies of lizards are too long and their limbs too small and
slender for this to be the usual mode of progress, as it seems to have
been among the Dinosaurs.
ANIMALS OF THE AGE OF REPTILES.
LAND REPTILES.
DINOSAURS corresponding to the larger quadrupeds or land
mammals of today.
CROCODILES, LIZARDS AND TURTLES still surviving.
SEA REPTILES.
PLESIOSAURS } corresponding to whales, dolphins, seals,
ICHTHYOSAURS } etc., or sea-mammals of today.
MOSASAURS }
FLYING REPTILES OR PTEROSAURS.
BIRDS WITH TEETH (scarce and little known).
PRIMITIVE MAMMALS of minute size (scarce and little known).
FISHES and INVERTEBRATES many of them of extinct races, all
more or less different from modern kinds.
Fishes, large and small, were common in the seas and rivers of the Age
of Reptiles but all of them were more or less different from modern
kinds, and many belonged to ancient races now rare or extinct.
The lower animals or Invertebrates were also different from those of
today, although some would not be very noticeably so at first glance.
Among molluscs, the Ammonites, related to the modern Pearly Nautilus,
are an example of a race very numerous and varied during all the
periods of the Reptilian Era, but disappearing at its close, leaving
only a few collateral descendants in the squids, cuttlefish and nautili
of the modern seas. The Brachiopods were another group of molluscs, or
rather molluscoids for they were not true molluscs, less abundant even
then than in previous ages and now surviving only in a few rare and
little known types such as the lamp-shell (_Terebratulina_).
_Insects._ The Insect life of the earlier part of the Age of Reptiles
was notable for the absence of all the higher groups and orders,
especially those adapted to feed on flowers. There were no butterflies
or moths, no bees or wasps or ants although there were plenty of
dragonflies, cockroaches, bugs and beetles. But in the latter part of
this era, all these higher orders appeared along with the flowering
plants and trees.
_Plants._ The vegetation in the early part of the era was very
different both from the gloomy forests of the more ancient Coal Era
and from that which prevails today. Cycads, ferns and fern-like
plants, coniferous trees, especially related to the modern
_Araucaria_ or Norfolk Island Pine, Ginkgos still surviving in China,
and huge equisetae or horsetail rushes, still surviving in South
American swamps and with dwarfed relatives throughout the world, were
the dominant plant types of that era. The flowering plants and
deciduous trees had not appeared. But in the latter half of the era
these appeared in ever increasing multitudes, displacing the lower
types and relegating them to a subordinate position. Unlike the more
rapidly changing higher animals these ancient Mesozoic groups of
plants have not wholly disappeared, but still survive, mostly in
tropical and southern regions or as a scanty remnant in contrast with
their once varied and dominant role.
There is every reason to believe that upon the appearance of these
higher plants whose flower and fruit afforded a more concentrated and
nourishing food, depended largely the evolution of the higher animal
life both vertebrate and insect, of the Cenozoic or modern era.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The records of Egypt and Chaldaea extend back at least
sixty centuries.]