Extinct Animals.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXI, Issue 8959, 7 December 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

Extinct Animals.

In a volume under tho above title just published by Professor Ray Lankester, the the question, "Hon' do we ieco'-nise fraguiin'ti of bones found in the earth? How do wo know tfct the lower jaw of an animal like, but stilr wv like. a horse? or that another is part of the skeleton of a tapir or of a Tcpt-uc. The answer is that the shape of the different parts of each kind of imimal is very constant. Kvcn their microscopic texture is fixed. Beginning with the study of living forms, an immense series or facts lias been btlilt up in orderly fashion, ■ and the scier.ce of comparative anatomy, rir aniir.nl morphology, is When vfe get a new animal we cilrefuliy compare it v/itb those that are kiiowii, and note the resemblances and differences. One of the mo6t TeniaTfcibii? instances of the application of tills pnn.i";o is that of Sir Robert Owen's recognition of in<xi Zealand. Ail in? h-id to work oil was the fragment of a bone ceven inches long; v/hi"!> hj« decided was the middle part of a t'nglihone almost identical with that of an ostrich," but i;H»ch laigcf. If Wait some years before hit statement was confirmed by the JinJin/ of whole skeletons. Since tlicri loii's; scries of these ilightiess birds has bi;en gathered, aiiu we even have their and in some cases tehir feathers, which are curiously like those of the emu. Anions the thousand of species oi extinct vertebrate animals that have been found of large size have occurred. These have caught Hi" popular fancy, and the opinion has grown tfcit extinct aninials as a. rule iveic as cori'ij>.ited with those of to-day. There is Gome tTuth in this, but it is only part of the truth. The extinct sloths and armadillos of Scutli

America. dwarf their modern representatives into insignificance. We liad a kangaroo in Australia—it formerly lived on the Werribee plaints—whose height. w;is 12ft. or 14ft., and whose skull was as large as tliat of a cart-horse. But the modern horse is larger tlitin all its pro-

uenitors, and one of its curliest ancc-stots that we can confidently recognise was tho

oizo of a fox. I'eeent elephants are as largo as any of their extinct relatives, .-snd no "extinct animal of any kind has ri\v!:e.t in bulk the modern great whales. '! i.ere were certainly some enormous reptiles in times none 1 >v. but tliey did not weipn as much as an elephant; and were dv." rfs compared with whales. Like t;ther parts of the world, we formerly had some '.ri-g-antic sliarks in our Australian seas, and we occasionally find teeth tliat point to monsters, perhaps a hundred feet 1 _ng. But a shark is slender compared with, a whale. In the Melbourne National Museum is cast of a skeleton of an gigantic sloth, known as Mylodon. It nearly equalled an elephant in bulk, and, lxiing too heavy to climb trees, apparently, pulled them down. There is no tr.idit'icn'of the former presence of these animals in .South America, where their tons occur, but a few years ago, :n a cave iit Patagonia, pieces of the skin, covered with greenish hair, ar.d sti; !«d with small bony nodules, were for.-.d. These were associated with bones of ;-ivlodon in a fairly fresh condition. (. irtilage, tendon, and blood-smears were ill on them. There were bundles of hay in the cave, together with the Temair..; of lain, ami it has been suggested, withconsiderable show of reason, that the Ind ins formerly kept these Strange animals b: re. fed them, and slaughtered them for i" k!. •Some of the Mylodon bones have Leen split, evidently to obtain the marrow. It is a strange story, but, a.s tiie British museum has a very large collection oi the material, there can be no doubt as to ;he main facts, but they are very puzzlii'/. Among the notable finds of fossil b<':'.es may be mentioned tint at Bernijs-axt.: ear Brussels. They were the same ijones of Iguanodon, a gigantic reptile, belonging to an extinct group. These animals had large hind limbs and small front- o: cs.

From footprints which have been preserved we know that sometimes they vert on all fours, but at others they walked, on their hand so that at first sight t :ey would resemble a kangaroo. But kangaroos do not walk on their hind le_s — they hop, moving both feet together, just as a fowl docs. There are many different kinds of these Iguanodons. some large and some small. The height of the Bernissart specimens, when standing up, kangaroo fashion, was about 14 feet—that is to sty. about the size of our largest fossil k.m-

garoo. The Temains of 110 less than 25 of these skeletons were found embedded in soft, clay-like rock. Seven have been meat carefully extracted and set tip as complete skeletons in a lmll specially built to Toccivo titern in the Brussels Museum.

Another distinct, group of reptiles, known is the Theromorp'ia, older tlian the group

to v.'hich Iguanodon belongs, is of interest as sliovt-ir.j by their skulls many points of iVv'uiblance to the point at which the maminais and Teptilc-s diverged from a common stock. Or.e of the members of this group, known as Pariasaurus, wr.is a thick-set- animal, something of the biiild of a pug-dog, and about Bft. long. The first one found camo from South Africa, but more recently a great find of their remains Ins been made near Archangel, in Russia. Under the guidance of Professor Amalitzsky, of Warsaw, the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg lias been spending about- a thousand pounds a year for many years past in excavating these skeletons and Temoving them to Warsaw. A very large number have been carefully chiselled out of the nodules in -which they occur and mounted in a great hall in tho Warsaw Museum.

Turning to our Australian fossils, we find them scantily treated; in fact, only one is dealt with at any length. This is not because we liave none, but rather tliat, -with one exception, no well-equip-ped parties liave systematically worked at the task of excavating their remains, years ago fragments of skeletons of m:iny different kinds of marsupials were sent to England and wcTe written ori at length by Sir Richard Owen. Mr C. W. De Vis, of the Brisbane Museum, Ilis done a lot of work on the rich fossil deposits ot the Darling Downs, and his museum is easilyfirst- in fossil vertebrates in Australia. The Adelaide Museum some years ago sent out an expedition to Lake Callabonna, to the cast of Lake Eyre. After immense toil

a fine series of skeltons was obtained. The task of extracting the bones, and mending the broken, almost powdery, remains, and then building up the more or le6s complete skeleton, has almost- been too much for the small staff, but Mr A. Zeitz has worked wonders by his patience and skill, and he and Dr E. C. Stirling, lnve given us the first fruits of their work. Tho task requires money, and probably an expedition from elsewhere, America or Germany, will Teap the greater part of the harvest of our- Australian extinct mammals.

Apart from our fossil kangaroos, several of which were giants, probably the most extinct form is Diprotodon. There is a fine cast of a skull in our National Museum. It is about 4ft. long, and the whole animal was about the size of a rhinoceros. A representation of it- is to be seen in the Zoo. Its front teeth are as one's wrist. The grinding teeth luivo two great cross ridges on them, and resemble the toeth of a kangaroo. In the build of its body it- Tesembfes a wombat, but its feet, as shown by the Callabonna discoveries, aTe built on the plan of a native-beaT's or 'possum's. That it was a harmless vegetable-feeder is shown bv the form of its teeth, while Temains of vegetable matter found inside of the skeleton were identified as on© of the salt bushes. This hugo beast liad a wide range over Australia. There are rumors, not apparently adequately confirmed, of its being found near Lake Darlot, in West Australia; it occurred on the Darling Downs, and in New South Wales. In Victoria it common about Camperdown and Colac, and a jaw was not long a"0 dug up in the sewerage works near Flemington. Bridce. It was, as indicated above, a composite sort of an animal, showing relationships to several different groups of marsupials now quite distinct; or it was, in the language of science, a "primitive form." The further back in time -we go the more animals do we find that will not fit into the schemes of classification founded on living forms. A great proportion of them are in a way "missing links." Diprotodon is not an ancestor of the kangaroos, wombats, and native bears, for the two former, at any rate, were its contemporaries, but it still preserved ancestral characters shewing that these three

as well as itself sprang from a common stock. This is. one of a class of facts that the biridy of fossils tells us not once, but with reiterated emphasis.- It is ever before us, and lends to such study an interest it would not othowiae have.