Identifier: outing51newy (find matches)
Title: Outing
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors:
Subjects: Leisure Sports Travel
Publisher: (New York : Outing Pub. Co.)
Contributing Library: Tisch Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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magine.This strange shallow sea, so different, asindeed was all else, even the atmosphereitself, in those almost inconceivably distantdays, from anything now existing, this seawhose glassy surface never stirred intocurrents by alternations of temperaturewith alternating seasons, never whippedinto fury by passing gales, how, aroused tounwonted life and action, it must havesurged and boiled and broken into cloudsof spray about the bodies of the huge mon-sters that swarmed in its waters, as en-countering each other they played orfought together. The creatures were differently butequally equipped for war. Of course, notall species of mosasaurs, nor all specimensof any one particular species, reached themaximum length of fifty feet, the smallestfound being about ten feet long; butneither is there any reason to believe, tak-ing into consideration the extremely smallpercentage of animals whose remains havesurvived the vicissitudes of so many agesand the proportion of those which have yet 739
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Some Ancient American Giants 741 been collected, that we know the greatestlength the mosasaurs attained. It ispretty safe to say that in their day andgeneration they produced individuals con-siderably exceeding fifty feet in length.However this may be, it is certain thatthese creatures, when adult, possessed atleast fifty feet of bone and sinew. Theyhad moderately short necks supportingstout wedge-shaped heads, with enor-mously powerful jaws armed with a moreformidable array of great conical teeth(three rows of them upon the upper jawalone) than is possessed by any living crea-ture of to-day. They swallowed their preywhole, their jaws opening so widely andextending so far back in the head, and theligaments at the gape by which the jawswere bound together and also by which theframework of the mouth was fastened tothe other parts of the skull were so pliantas to admit the passage of large bodies.According to Professor S. Williston themouth of the gullet was prolonged forwardin swallowin

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