Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 104 December 1901 to May 1902 . roportionally destructive to thefishes around them. Thus those primi-tive seas—gorgeous in their brightlycolored, slender-stalked, and gracefulPentacrinoids (stone-lilies), waving likebeautiful flowers from the rocks—werebut the scenes of continuous rapine andwholesale slaughter of the finny tribesby each other and their huge reptiliantyrants, one of which (Pliosaurus), fromthe Kimmeridge clay, had a jaw six feetlong, a tooth measuring fifteen inches,and a paddle of seven feet, thus exceedingin size the two forms above mentio
Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 104 December 1901 to May 1902 . roportionally destructive to thefishes around them. Thus those primi-tive seas—gorgeous in their brightlycolored, slender-stalked, and gracefulPentacrinoids (stone-lilies), waving likebeautiful flowers from the rocks—werebut the scenes of continuous rapine andwholesale slaughter of the finny tribesby each other and their huge reptiliantyrants, one of which (Pliosaurus), fromthe Kimmeridge clay, had a jaw six feetlong, a tooth measuring fifteen inches,and a paddle of seven feet, thus exceedingin size the two forms above mentioned. Contemporaneous with these colossalmarine fish-destroyers were the batlikePterodactyles—flying lizards with tooth-ed or smooth jaws, pneumatic bones,and an insatiable appetite for fishes. Assome of the toothless examples discov-ered by the late Professor Marsh inthe Chalk of North America had jaws ayard in length, and others had a spreadof wing of fully twenty feet, it was notrifling amount of fishes that was neces-sary to support them. These weird bat-. Fig. II.—Head and Mouth of common Rorqual(The lower Jaw uppermost) like lizards with their membranouswings could shuffle on land as well asperch on rocks . (Sir A. Geikie). The ponderous bodies of the Ichthy-osaurs and Plesiosaurs, besides being athome in the sea, also, as Sir RichardOwen says, sought the shores, crawledon the sand, and basked in the sunshine ;and therein they differed from all thegreat whales of modern times, only oneof which, the gray whale of the Pacificshores of America, could even rest withsafety on the bottom in shallow water. The number of the Ichthyosaurs,Plesiosaurs, and other gigantic tyrants ofthe ocean, in-shore as well as off-shore,gives rise to many reflections. Every-thing being left to nature, no regulationas to size, quantity, or season held swayamongst the predaceous inhabitants ofthe sea. The mature as well as immatureforms were devoured, and this with adaily regularity unknown e
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