LOOKING BACKWARD

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 February 1938, Page 5

LOOKING BACKWARD

VANISHED GIANT REPTILES In a Christmas lecture for jjiveniles, at the Royal Institution, Mr. Julian Huxley turned succeeding pages in the vast book of geological time to show how and when animals and other creatures, stranger than any that we know, became extinct, says “The Times.” He enlivened his subject — “Rare animals and the disappearance of wild life” —by producing some living specimens of rare types that have mysteriously survived, and by showing an excellent film of the peculiar fauna of Australia.

He dealt first, with the disappearance. millions of years ago, of giant reptiles with armoured bodies and microscopic brains. These and other creatures became extinct because of their faulty adaptation to a changing environment, and the lecturer explained that it was not until 10,000 or 15,000 years ago that primitive man began I to lend a hand in these natural, pro-1 cesses. From a tank at his side-’Mr. Huxley fished out a king-crab which he exhibited as a rare surviving type. of a whole group of animals which 1 disappeared ages ago. This, he said, used to be thought of as a curious type of crustacean, like a crab, but it was much more nearly, related to the extinct sea scorpions.

From another tank a lungfish was

produced, one of three types in existence, and the audience heard how the air bladder of-this creature has been turned into a lung so that, it can breathe air and survive for years out of water. The lecturer told of the interesting fauna and types that have susvived from a remote past in South America —when the Isthmus of Panama did not always exist—and in Australia, through the isolation of those continents.

in addition to showing some interesting charts to illustrate the 300,000,000 years through which successive terminations of animals have occurred, Mr. Huxley graphically explained the geological time scale by means of a ream of typewriting paper. He explained that the ream contained 480 sheets and that, these made a packet a little over an inch high. Taking the thickness of one sheet of paper to represent the lapse of a thousand years he told his audience that the time since the beginning of the Ice Age would represent a. sheaf of papers a little higher than the one he held in his hand; that the time since the great reptiles were extinguished would represent a pile over 10ft. high; and that the time that has elapsed since the rrilobites disappeared would represent a mountain of sheets of paper higher than the Eiffel Tower,