IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3672, 29 July 1924, Page 29

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

THE WORLD’S LARGEST ANIMALS.

By

J Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

A question has been asked by Mr H. T. Illington, Devon street, Mew Plymouth, as to the largest animal in the world. He probably means the largest mammal, and the answer is that the record is held by a whale stranded at Corvisart Bay, in the Australian Bight. It was 87ft 4in long, in a straight line, and it displaced on the record the Okarito whale, whose skeleton is in Canterbury Museum, and whose body, on the Okarito beach, in a straight line, measured 87ft exactly. Both those sea-mammals were blue whales, both were females, and both were washed ashore. As far as is known, they were larger than any extinct mammal, in the sea or on the land. There may have been larger sharks in the Cretaceous Period, some, perhaps, 90ft long. In the same period, land reptiles were larger still, but not much larger.

The Dinosaurians—the title means “terrible lizards”—were the largest of all the land animals. Some of these reptiles were more than 100 ft long. The earlier forms of Dinosaurians were shaped like crocodiles, to which tJiey were closely related. Later forms resembled the vhinoceros in shape, and others the kangaroo, those Dinosaurians walking on their hind feet, which had only three toes; and their forelegs sometimes were small. Diplodocus, one of the most notable of the Dinosaurians, reached in the case of one species, a length of 84ft and a height on the hump of its hack of 129 ft. This species, winch, reconstructed, is in the British Museunij is Diplodocus carnegii. The first remains of Diplodocus were found in rocks of the Upper Jurassic Period, in Western North America. Several other species of Diplodocus have been identified from remains left in North America. Each had an elongated neck and tail, and a brain cavity hardly sufficient to contain a walnut. The blunt, feeble teeth, and flat, extended snout suggest to zoologists that Diplodocus fed mainly on succulent water-weeds. An aquatic life seems to be indicated by a large opening at the highest point of the head, and it is thought that a soft valve was used to close up the nostrils when under water. A flexible lash at the end of tlie tail may have been used as a weapon, some compensation for the Diplodocus’s unarmoured condition. The horned Dinosaurians. whose remains have been found in onlv one narrow belt near the Rocky Mountains, had gigantic heads, armed with formidable horns, and a long crest or frill that projected backward over the neck. Healed wounds in skulls, broken horns, fractured jaws, and ' pierced frills supply evidence that these well armed reptiles were fighters, and often had terrible combats. The last of the race, if the slender evidence of tU© fossils can I>6 accepted, had three horns, a pair of large ones springing from above the eyes and extendvno- upwards and forwards, and a smaller one on the nose, A species that lived in an earlier age had a large horn on the nose and small and rudimentary brow horns. Between these two extremes of fashions in horns, some of the homed reptiles had horns curving forward, others had horns bent back, others had horns that turned outward, others had horns that stood erect. All had short, massive limbs and broad elephantine feet. I hey fed on herbage, probably the stems, branches, leaves and twigs of shrubs and trees. In the Jurassic rocks of America, there have been found the remains of small Dinosaurians, which seem to have been closely related to birds. It is believed that they were arboreal in habit. They are additional evidence of a family connection between reptiles and birds, which' have followed widely different lines of development. When remains of the earliest known bird were found in Jurassic rocks in Bavaria, it was believed to have been a reptile as it had teeth, which no living bird possesses,- a long, lizard-like tail, three free fingers equipped with daws on each hand, and other reptilian characters; but feathers on its wings and on its tatl, the structure of its feet, and the fusing of all the bones of its skull into one, stamp it indubitably as a bird, and no zoologist now doubts that Archeopteryx—the ancient bird—was a bird, not a reptile.

Somewhat later In the world’s history, hut still in the Mesozoic Era, two species of birds, which had teeth, but no reptilian characters, lived in North America. One, Hesperornis—the western bird—was a swimmer, hut its wings were degenerate, and it, like the moa, the kiwi, and the veka of New Zealand; seems to have lost the power of flight. The other, iethyornis—fishbird—was a powerful flyer. Early crocodiles hardly can be distinguished from the Dinosaurians, but later crocodiles are more specialised in structure . The Ichthyosaurus- —fish reptile—which connects reptiles with their poor relations, the fishes, as Archeopteryx connects them with their higher relations in the social scale, the birds, had the biggest eyea known of, but was not gigantic in size. In liabits and appearance it resembled the whales and the porpoises of these days. Like them, it v. aa a marine creature, and its affinities, apparently, were with the early Rhynchocephalians—the snout-heads —of whom New Zealand’s tuatara is the only living representative. They connect the lizards with the crocodiles and the turtles. The Labyrinth-odonts—creatures whoso teeth had a labyrinthine pattern of structure —were amphibians. They were very plentiful in the Permian Period, when they may have appeared in Mew Zealand. They died out at the end of the Triassic Period, before mammals had appeared. They varied amazingly in shape and size. Some, like frogs and other modern amphibians, were only a few inches long. Others, giants of their race, were about eight feet long, a length no living amphibian has attained. Seals and their allies oftener are referred do as amphibians, because they spend much time in the sea, but they are mammals. Whales, also, are mammals, although they live exclusively in the pea. Amphibians do not live in water or in air at will. They merely change their method of respiration, during their lives, from water to air. Some Labyrinth-odonts were like lizards, others were like snakes, others were very like crocodiles. The larger ones developed bony plates on the head, chest and abdomen. Some of the smaller ones encased themselves in complete armour—cap-a-pie. There is an impression that extinct creatures had a monopoly of everything that is strange in structure and appearance and prodigious in size. Palaeontology does not support that impression, which, perhaps, has arisen in the same way as the impression that distant fields are green. The most ornate of the Dinosaurians was not more bizzarre than the common horned toad of these days. Old-time reptiles were the largest land animals the world has known, hut they were not much larger than present-day whales, which certainly are the largest recorded mammals, living or extinct. The Okarito whale ranks second amongst them ; it was beaten by an Australian whale by only four inches Three great fractures in the earth traverse the Taupo-Rotorua district, which has attracted the attention of many geologists, and which has an extensive geological literature. One feature, marked by geysers and many hot springs, passes along the western side of the Paeroa Range, through Orakei, Wairakei, and Tokaanu. The main vents of the Tongariro-Ruapehu group, and a small volcanic centre near Ohakune represent another fracture. Movements along it caused a series of earthquakes in 1922. Tlie third fracture passe# along the western base of the Kaimanawa Range. The Tarawera eruption of 1886 dramatically disclosed still another fracture in the Taupo-Rotorua district. The series of craters formed then extends down a fissure about nine miles long. Dr J. Henderson, a member of the staff of the Geological Survey, states that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more likelv to occur in regions where systems of fractures meet, as they do in the TaupoRotorua district. He believes that movements of the earth are taking place there, and he adds that the frequency of th« adjustments, manifested on the surface by earthquakes, suggests that the stresses are relieved before they accumulate sufficiently to produce earthquakes of the first magnitude. Earthquakes have been frequent in the Taupo district since the first European occupation of that part. ‘Shocks of earthquakes are frequently felt at Taupo, hut the Natives, little conscious of their cause, have been in the habit of regarding them as tokens of fruitful seasons,” the Rev. J. Buller, an early missionary, wrote eighty-four years ago. Sir James Hector, thirty-six years ago, gave a census of shocks between 1868 and 1887, which showed that district to be the place most subject to earthquakes in New Zealand, hut the sliofhs were not severe. In Mesozoic times, there were great eruptions of rhyolitic rock near Taupe. Vast quantities of fragmental material were thrown out. Adjacent mountains were covered with a thick mantle of tuff, and depressed areas were filled. Gently sloping plains were built from Taupo north to the hay of Plenty, and north-west to Hauraki Gulf. The Kaingaroa Plain is part of the original surface of these deposits.