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Timaru Herald, Volume XIC, Issue 13397, 21 September 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

One of -tin? most- remarkable beasts which ever dwelt upon the wonderful globe has been (says "Chambers's Journal") laboriously reconstructed bit by bit by Professor Henry F. Osborn, of the Department of Verebrate Palaeontology, in the Museum of Xatural History, Xev,York. The main parts of the skeleton were found by Mr Charles Steinberg in 1896. in North-western Texas. The arranging of the various portions of thevery elaborat fossil skeleton, and supplying missing parts, in the* almost complete absence of any reliable data to go upon, was a remarkable achievement catling for the very highest skill. The result is the lxmy framework of a mammoth lizard Bjft long, having a huge finlik" structure upon its back in the form of immense projections on each of the vertebrae. Th<se projections bear a faint resemblance to the square-rigged masts of a ship, and the weird beast has been christened the ship-lizard in consequence. •Science is absolutely at a loss to explain the use of this immense dorsal structure, and only a few wild guesses have been advanced to account for it. The naosaums was :v carnivorous reptile, and judging from his formidable array of tigeriik-? teeth, he must have been a very ugly customer at clore quarter?. He lived —so they say who have studied him—some twelve million yeans ago. The age of mammals is reckoned as occupying [•<nii° three million years, in which the 50.000 years of the age of man is comparatively negligible. Tt is a wonderful thought that- after th*» hipse of a hundred ami twenty tlnimiiml centuries tin's strange creature's b:»m\s «houM have been builtup again—probably not absolutely correct—and mounted 1 for exhibition in a Xew York museum. i Woods' Qr*nt Peppermint Cur* for "nTtrrhx *nd Cold* n«T«r I$JHt. 1* 6d aad ■h 6<L...