To support all this weight of skull and body requires very massive legs, and as the fore legs are very short, this enables Triceratops to browse comfortably from the ground by merely lowering the front of the head.
These forms we have been considering were the giants of the group, but a commoner species, Thespesius, though less in bulk than those just mentioned, was still of goodly proportions, for, as he stalked about, the top of his head was twelve feet from the ground.
Thespesius and his kin seem to have been comparatively abundant, for they have a wide distribution, and many specimens, some almost perfect, have been discovered in this country and abroad. No less than twenty-nine Iguanodons, a European relative of Thespesius, were found in one spot in mining for coal at Bernissart, Belgium. Here, during long years of Cretaceous time, a river slowly cut its way through the coal-bearing strata to a depth of 750 feet, a depth almost twice as great as the deepest part of the gorge of Niagara, and then, this being accomplished, began the work of filling up the valley it had excavated.
It was then a sluggish stream with marshy borders, a stream subject to frequent floods, when the water, turbid with mud and laden with sand, overflowed its banks, leaving them, as the waters subsided, covered thickly with mud. Here, amidst the luxuriant vegetation of a semi-tropical climate, lived and died the Iguanodons, and here the pick of the miner rescued them from their long entombment to form part of the treasures of the museum at Brussels.
Like other reptiles, living and extinct, Thespesius was continually renewing his teeth, so that as fast as one tooth was worn out it was replaced by another, a point wherein Thespesius had a decided advantage over ourselves. On the other hand, as there was a reserve supply of something like 400 teeth in the lower jaw alone, what an opportunity for the toothache!
And then we have a multitude of lesser Dinosaurs, including the active, predatory species with sharp claws and double-edged teeth. Megalosaurus, the first of the Dinosaurs to be really known, was one of these carnivorous species, and from our West comes a near relative, Ceratosaurus, the nose-horned lizard, a queer beast with tiny fore legs, powerful, sharp-clawed hind feet, and well-armed jaws. A most formidable foe he seems, the more that the hollow bones speak of active movements, and Professor Cope pictured him, or a near relative, vigorously engaged in combat with his fellows, or preying upon the huge but helpless herbivores of the marshes, leaping, biting, and tearing his enemy to pieces with tooth and claw.
Professor Osborn, on the other hand, is inclined to consider him as a reptilian hyena, feeding upon carrion, although one can but feel that such an armament is not entirely in the interests of peace.
Last, but by no means least, are the Stegosaurs, or plated lizards, for not only were they beasts of goodly size, but they were among the most singular of all known animals, singular even for Dinosaurs. They had diminutive heads, small fore legs, long tails armed on either side near the tip, with two pairs of large spines, while from these spines to the neck ran series of large, but thin, and sharp-edged plates standing on edge, so that their backs looked like the bottom of a boat provided with a number of little centreboards. Just how these plates were arranged is not decided beyond a peradventure, but while originally figured as having them in a single series down the back it seems much more probable that they formed parallel rows.
