Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1915 — PREHISTORIC MONSTERS. [ARTICLE]

PREHISTORIC MONSTERS.

Latest Theories About Appearance of Strange Creature's That Once Inhabited Earth. The exact appearance of the prehistoric monsters which once lived on earth is not easy to determine. Scientists have been working for years at the task of reconstructing these mighty animals from the bones discovered in many parts of the world, but each decade sees new ideas brought forward, so that the reconstructions have to be altered according to the latest light shed upon the form of these ancient creatures by the most recent discoveries. Probably the earliest of all the extinct monsters to become known “to modern man was the mammoth. It-is to be compared to the elephant only because of its tusks and its enormous size, but in many other respects it differs so greatly as to be unique. At first the mammoth’s bones were not recognized as belonging to an aniTbal, but were supposed to be the remains of some primeval giants, the Gogs and Magogs of primitive human thought. Fortunately some of the bodies of the mammoth have been found frozen solid in Siberia, so that the task of reconstruction was made easy. The bones were still covered by the flesh, and that, in turn, by the hide—a thick brownishred hair required to endure the cold of the ice age. Prof. Abel maintains that the reconstruction of mammoths in many instances are all wrong, and gives a drawing of what lhe holds was the real appearance of this huge creature, with the enormous hump over the shoulders and the very strangelooking head. The monster sloths of the prehistoric age have not been easy to reconstruct, yet fairly good representa-; tions of these enormous creatures are to be seen in some museums. There were the megatherium and mylodon robustum, so gigantic that when you look at the skeletons alone, with the enormous ribs «as now put together, you seem to be looking up a hill. But other huge animals resembled the modern anteater, at least in the shape of the skull. And then, too, there were the great armadillos, such as glyptodom elavipes, protected-, by heavy armor, and the enormous doedicurus clavicaudatus, with its tail protected by bony tubes and rings, with the ebony club on the end that might easily kill any animal With a single blow. This last sometimes had a body 12 feet in length and a tail extending as far behind it. ’ ' If mylodon robustum was as tall .as a nelephant z he was still much smaller than diplodocus caregei, called diplodocus because of the “dou-ble-beam” bones on the under part of the tail. Some of these monsters were 80 feet long and could raise their heads 35 feet above the ground. They had no armor like the smaller armadillo family, but that mighty tail must have been an awful weapon of offense and defense. The greatest of this family was the atlantosaurus, that grew 7 to a length of 120 feet, making him the largest animal ever known on earth. But their brains were very small, and they soon had to give way to changed environment and cleverer beasts of prey. Prehistoric’ earth was not at peace, for it had its beasts of prey of all kinds, large and small. There was

Jthe terrible saber-toothed tiger, larger than any one now known, whose mighty jaws and teeth have been recovered from the early strata of the earth, and the cave bear, larger than our largest bears.'There, too, -was the smijodon of the pampas of the Argentine, more powerful than any of our modern panthers or cou- ' gars. , Then there was the woolly iffiinoeeros of Europe, with two horns and a woolly coat' to protect it against the cold. He was one of the mighty beasts of European forests. Air that has been found are the bones of. a young specimen, but these are convincing in their might. r The animal out of which the line of horses came is known as hyracotherium. It was about the size of a fox terrier. The fore and hind limbs were four and three toed respectively, with sometimes a fifth toe on the’ fore leg, in the eohippus, set down direct ancestor of our horses. As the teeth became harder these animals became more a'nd more like horses on a very small scale. Gradually they grew a little larger from feeding upon harder food, and became as large as fqxes. There were still the same number of toes, butthe animals were rising more on their toes, to obtain greater speed, the second toe growing larger, the others smaller.

This was all in the very ancient Eocene period. With the opening of the next age the teeth are found much stronger. They had larger heads and were taller. Their, feet were more compact, and they had but three toes on each foot. tn the Miocene period the horses had grown still taller, now being about the size of Shetland ponies. The extra toes still persisted, but were quite off the ground, and especially in North America considerable progress had been made. In the Pliocene period, and the Pleistocene still further progress in the horse is to be noted, in the elongation of the nose, the loss of the toes, and the length of the limbs, until Anally the modern horse was evolved.—New York American.