“In the coal fields complete imprints of Ichthyosauria have been found, doubtless due to the carbonization of the animal matter. And impressions have been left in stone of the very feathers worn by some of the now fossilized creatures.”
It was by comparison of fossil remains that the well known evolution of the horse from a little fellow the size of a fox was learned. Ted often thought of that three-toed Miocene horse, and the giant monsters of his time,—of the upthrust of the Rocky Mountains, cutting off the moist sea breeze from the marshy country to the Eastward and making desert of it. This made life too hard for the heavy, slow-witted creatures, and they failed to survive the change. But the nimble footed little horse trotted long distances with ease, to find food and water.
Norris convulsed them by describing the creature on which he declared the aeroplane was modeled,—the pteranodon, that giant lizard, largest of flying creatures even in Mesozoic age, whose bat-like wings reached 20 feet from tip to tip,—as the fossil skeletons plainly prove.
This interesting specimen was a link in the chain between the birds of to-day and their ancestral archeopteryx, no larger than a crow whose front legs metamorphosed to short wings, whose skeletons have been found perfectly preserved in the limestone.
Ted was frantic for fear they would not find the place again, then could hardly wait to hear the Geological Survey man’s pronouncement on his find. Norris chipped and chipped, with knife and hammer, till he had uncovered the impress of a great, membranous wing.
It was a fossil dinosaur,—a pterodactyl!
Ted’s college education was secure!
CHAPTER X
HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE