PREHISTORIC MONSTERS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 May 1925, Page 13

PREHISTORIC MONSTERS.

INTERESTING DISCOVERIES. In the early ’eighties of last century the crew of a sealing schooner reported having seen on the side of an inlet on the coast of Alaska a huge and extraordinary animal disappearing up into a steep ravine—the crashing of its progress among the boulders and bushes reaching their ears. Now comes reports from Alaska and Kamchatka which deal with the same monster and its kind —the keratosauros of far-off ages—ages when the mammoth. existed in north-Eastern Siberia (says a writer in the Boys’ Own Paper). Fossils unearthed by a Smithsonian expedition, working in northern Mon-, golia, prove that a land connection once existed between Asia and North America. For parts of these remains have been identifed as of the titanotherc and also of the blauehitorium — two huge animals, the bones of which have been found in Utah and Montana. It ha to he kept in mind, too, that in a winter of excessive frosts when the sea between the Diomede Island freezes hard which it has done in recent years, animals find the'i r way across Behring Straits into Alaska and again from Alaska into Kamchatka. According to accounts, there appears to he not one but ,several of this great rhinoceros-like monsters, the keratotlie latter being long—between 60ft to the sub-Arctic. For, while* the coin

parativelv fresh remains of a you ig lceratosauros was found last year in Kamchatka, the Catholic missionary at Armstrong Creek, in the far Yukon, Pere Lavagneaux, when travelling iiji the wilds there, actually rested his eyes on a full-grown monster. Twp trappers accompanying him also saw this survivor from prehistoric* ages. According to the padre, who is distinguished for his good work and influence among Yukon Indians, the creature appeared to he, from nose to tail — the latter being long—between Clift o 70ft in length, and covered with greyblack bristles. It lurched down the ravine ahead of them “sweeping rocks aside like pebbles.” It or another of the same species, was also witnessed crossing ai river, carrying between its jaws the body of a deer or caribou. “The stench of it coming down wind was overpowering.”