Identifier: geology00cham (find matches)
Title: Geology
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Chamberlin, Thomas C. (Thomas Chrowder), 1843-1928 Salisbury, Rollin D., 1859- joint author
Subjects: Geology
Publisher: New York, H. Holt and co.
Contributing Library: Internet Archive
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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he terrestrial animals continued to bear thesame general aspect as they did in the Jurassic and Comanchean. InEurope, where the sea made great inroads upon the land, there wassome decline in the abundance, variety, and gigantic proportions ofthe land animals, but in America, where the incursion of the sea wasmore limited, and where the post-Jurassic deformation of the westmade some compensation for sea-advance elsewhere, the land arearemained sufficiently large to permit the evolution of the reptilianhost to proceed with little restraint. On both continents, however, 17() GEOLOGY. the aquatic reptiles seem to have been relatively the more favored,anil i») have made the greater progress. The dinosaurs. These great reptiles still retained the dominantplace, but their pre-eminence was less marked than before. TheQarnivorous forms (Theropoda) were less abundant and varied. Amongtheir representatives was the Lcelaps or Dryptosaurus, a leaping, kan-garoo-like form with a Length of L5 feet.
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Fig. 409.—Spoonbi.l Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous (Hadrosaurus mirabilis Leidy) asinterpreted by Knight. (Osborn, Copyrighted by the Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist.) Th° most singular dinosaurian development appeared in the Cera-tops family of the herbivorous branch, particularly in the genus Tri-ceratops or Agathaumus (Fig. 410). These were very large quadru-peds, with enormous skulls which extended backwards over the neckand shoulders in a cape-like flange. Added to this was a sharp, parrot-like beak, a stout horn on the nose, a pair of large pointed horns onthe top of the head, and a row of projections around the edge of thecape. One of the larger skulls measured eight feet from the snoutto edge of the cape. This excessive provision for defense was notunnaturally accompanied by evidences of low mentality in the formof a very small brain cavity. Marsh remarks that they had the largest THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD. 177

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