Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/112

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
88
THE ZOOLOGIST.

but one creature that can be compared at all with it, and this would be only as a child beside it. The famous Brontosaur at the Yale Museum, at New Haven, is its only animal criterion of measurement. This was an animal of its own kind, a fellow-creature in Wyoming, where for millions of years they have laid together in the same deposit. The skeleton at Yale was restored in 1879 by Prof. Reed, under the direction of Prof. Marsh. Beside this monster, the largest Dinosaurs of Europe, and indeed the world, have remained since its discovery as only pigmies. For years the geological students have made pilgrimages to New Haven to study and to marvel at its immense skeleton. This monster is believed to have been 70 ft. in length, and to have weighed perhaps 80,000 pounds in life. Prof. Reed says that, although it is practically out of the question to give an accurate idea of a living Dinosaur, he should think that the animal now being restored would weigh in life sixty tons, that it had a neck 30 ft. in length, and a tail about 60 ft. in length, and the cavity of its body, with lungs and entrails out, would make a hall 34 ft. long and 16 ft. wide; the head of the animal is very small for the size of the body. There is no building in Laramie large enough to hold it, and when taken there, it will probably be placed temporarily on the campus. The work of restoring has been greatly interrupted by snow, but it is being carried on as rapidly as possible. For a great number of years Wyoming has been known to contain some of the world's most wonderful fossil fields, the first discovery dating back to 1858, and since 1877 Wyoming has been known to have the petrified remains of the largest land animals that have ever lived.—L. Small (777, Lincoln, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.).