. Elements of geology : a text-book for colleges and for the general reader. Geology. 520 CENOZOIO ERA—AGE OF MAMMALS. destroyed by the deluge. The length was about four feet. It was re- served for Cuvier to show that the fossil was not human, though the name Andrias Scheuchzeri (Fig. 891) had become permanently at- tached to it through Scheuchzer's mistake. A living species of the same genus is now found in Japan, and is of gigantic size. A representation of it is given in Fig. 892, for comparison with its fossil precursor. The Miocene of the Himalayas furnishes a gigantic turtle (Colossochel
. Elements of geology : a text-book for colleges and for the general reader. Geology. 520 CENOZOIO ERA—AGE OF MAMMALS. destroyed by the deluge. The length was about four feet. It was re- served for Cuvier to show that the fossil was not human, though the name Andrias Scheuchzeri (Fig. 891) had become permanently at- tached to it through Scheuchzer's mistake. A living species of the same genus is now found in Japan, and is of gigantic size. A representation of it is given in Fig. 892, for comparison with its fossil precursor. The Miocene of the Himalayas furnishes a gigantic turtle (Colossochelys Atlas), the carapace of which was twelve feet long and eight feet wide, and seven feet high in the roof, and the whole animal was probably twenty feet j long. Over sixty species of Tertiary turtles, and eight- een or twenty species of crocodiles, have been "de- scribed from foreign coun- tries (Dana). The Crocodilians, the highest living order of rep- tiles, first appeared in the Triassic, but only in gener- alized forms—Stagonolepis, Belodon, etc.—which close- ly connected them with the Lizards. From this early form Huxley has traced with consummate skill the gradual differentiation of this order, in the position of the posterior nares, the structure of the head and the form of the vertebral bodies, step by step through the Jurassic, Cretaceous, to the Tertiary, where the type reached its perfection. Birds.—The class of Birds in the Cretaceous was represented only by the reptilian birds and ordinary water birds. Now, in the Tertiary, however, the reptilian birds—vertebrated-tailed and socket-toothed— have disappeared. The bird-class is fairly differentiated from the rep- tilian class, and the connecting links destroyed. Birds of all kinds now appear^—land-birds as well as water-birds. In America, among land- birds, woodpeckers, owls, eagles, etc., have been discovered and de- scribed by Marsh. The number of species found in Europe is much greater than in
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectgeology, bookyear1892
