PREHISTORIC BEASTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 28 August 1926, Page 11

PREHISTORIC BEASTS.

Slabs of stone containing footprints of animals believed to be 2-5 million years old have arrived at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, from Grand Canyon, Arizona. Tracks have been discovered belonging to 14 disi tinet kinds of Perhaps the most interesting is a track indicating an eight-footed creature, the eight feet making a diamond formation. Tracks have been found on three different levels. Millions of years are represented between the levels of strata, the lowest of which is 1800 ft. under the rim of the canyon, and 400 ft. below any fossil footprints hitherto found. This layer is called the “Supia sandstone.’’ Animals that crawled across it when it was soft sand on the surface disappeared, and their tracks were covered by sediment through the ages, till the octopod . tracks were 400 ft. below the surface of the earth. Across this new surface—a muddy one —other animals crawled-—some leaving deep impressions close together, indicating heavy, squat-legged creatures ; others leaving the superficial unbroken trail of the worfti...Sedimentation continued through more millions of years until there was a new surface of 500 ft. above the level of the squatlegged and vermiform tracings Sand was again being deposited. There, in the now hardened sand, a third group of animals left their, footprints. After their period was ended, the earth was again piled up, 900 ft. more to the present top of the canyon. In later ages, the Colorado River, carving out the Grand Canyon, cut through the siibcessive layers, and these. are now being exposed and analysed Earlier discoveries of footprints on rocks in the Grand Canyon were reported in December, 1924. The Grand . Canyon of Arizona is one of the greatest wonders of nature on the American continent. The River Colorado, which rises in Utah, and finds its way after a course of 1100 miles to the Gulf of California, in Mexico, has during millions of years cut itself a deep chasm on the highlands of Arizona. Thisi canyon is more than 250 miles long, and in come places the river flows more than 5000 ft. (nearly a mile) below the surface of the plateau.