PRE-HISTORIC MONSTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 133, 7 June 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

PRE-HISTORIC MONSTERS.

ANIMALS BIGGER THAN TRAMCARS

It would have been very exciting to have been lost in the bush had men been on the earth -when the giant animals were roaming about millions of years ago. I should think that, had a man been fleeing with an 80ft monster behind him, lie would have felt like a rabbit feels when a big greyhound is hot on its heels. But when you come to think of it, boys and girls are very lucky sometimes in being able to tell you how they would have looked and felt in such a predicament. After eating green apples they can dream about being chased by hairy monsters, and so have all the excitement without any of the danger.

In the following story you will learn about the biggest animals that we knowto have been on the earth, and you will then be able to see if your dream animals would be big enough to beat them in a fight.

There have been found in rocks, in Czecho-Sloval>ia and North America the bones of animals which it is thought were the first to live wholly on the land. Instead of laying their spawn in the water, they wrapped it in a water-tight skin. This egg—for such it was—was buried in the ground and hatched by the heat of the sun.

Some of these animals had heads covered all over with a shield of bone, having breaks in the bone for nostrils and eyes, and a gap in the top of the head for a third eye. All these reptiles were low-built, with short but powerful legs, which did not come directly below the body. They waddled along. These animals are of the greatest interest, because some were ancestors of the mammals —animals whose young are fed by sucking the food from the mother.

In order to escape from enemies these creatures had to move quickly, and by trying to do so the limbs of their great-great-great-grandchildren became longer, and they were pulled closer to the body. And, as well as improving in wind and limb, the mammals put their brains to better use than their ancestors. A sense of hearing was developed, by which they were warned of the approach of floods or enemies. But in spite of being better equipped, the mammals did not have things their own way on the earth. For thousands of years they remained smaller than cats, and lived in trees, because the land, sea and air were full of reptiles. About this period there were many amazing reptiles. The most remarkable are the dinosaurs, a group which included the largest tend animals that ever lived. The brontosaurus were 80ft long and weighed over 30 tons. They spent their lives wading about in estuaries or rivers, and in the sea along the coast. They lived on trees, bushes and seaweed, being too slow to catch a meat meal.

Also on the land was an animal like a giant kangaroo, the trachodor. Others

walked on all four legs and carried a heavy armour of bony plates. Some had horns on their heads and bony frills around 1 lieir necks.

The chief enemies of these creatures were the dinosaurs, which lived on flesh. They were all kangaroo shaped, and of all sizes, from that of a hen to a monster called Tyrannosaurus, 15ft high and 30ft long.

The seas themselves about this age contained two great groups of reptiles. One, the ichthyosaurs, whale-shaped animals capable of swimming rapidly, lived on cuttlefish and even smaller individuals of their own kind. Instead of coming to land to lay eggs these animals were protected by the mother until capable of looking after themselves. Most of.the members of the other groups, the plesiosaurs, were remarkable for their immensely ,long necks and. 6mall heads. They seem to" have caught fish by sudden turns and sharp snaps of their widelyopening mouths. From the same stock as the dinosaurs arose the flying reptiles, the pterodactyls, which lived like the seagulls and albatrosses, by catching fish, even on the high seas far from land. ' As the wing 6 could never have been properly folded, it was impossible for them to alight on any ground other than a cliff edge, from which a shuffle and a flap would suffice to launch them.

In time the great reptiles gn land, sea and air died out, as they were not able to get enough to eat or protect themselves, or to stand the changes in the climate of the earth.

A little later there appeared in France and North America a group of small mammals, the largest no bigger than sheep. The lands to which these animals spread were shaped much differently from the countries as w$ know them to-day. It is thought that Australia at some period was joined to Asia and America, for the original pouched mammals which settled in Australia were also over the whole world. But other animals found there, such as the kangaroo, wombat and Tasmanian devil play no part in the history of the rest of the world beyond New Guinea, because the ocean has separated it from other lands.

Millions of years ago Europe was connected with North America by land, and galloping over these plains was the oldest known ancestor of the horse, called eohippue, no larger than a fox terrier and very like one in proportions. With these were numbers of little creatures that included the ancestors of the pigs, sheep, oxen and deer. Now that you know something about the first animals that made the earth their home, and from which have descended the animals that we have to-day, you may like to know what the first human beings were like and how they spent their time. In a later issue I will tell you some very interesting things about the history of the human race.