PREFACE BY DR. HENRY WOODWARD, F.R.S.
KEEPER OF GEOLOGY, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.
I have been requested by my friend Mr. Hutchinson, to express my opinion upon the series of drawings which have been prepared by that excellent artist of animals, Mr. Smit, for this little book entitled “Extinct Monsters.”
Many of the stories told in early days, of Giants and Dragons, may have originated in the discovery of the limb-bones of the Mammoth, the Rhinoceros, or other large animals, in caves, associated with heaps of broken fragments, in which latter the ignorant peasant saw in fancy the remains of the victims devoured at the monster’s repasts.
In Louis Figuier’s World before the Deluge we are favoured with several highly sensational views of extinct monsters; whilst the pen of Dr. Kinns has furnished valuable information as to the “slimy” nature of their blood!
The late Mr. G. Waterhouse Hawkins (formerly a lithographic artist) was for years occupied in unauthorised restorations of various Secondary reptiles and Tertiary mammals, and about 1853 he received encouragement from Professor Owen to undertake the restorations of extinct animals which still adorn the lower grounds of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.
But the discoveries of later years have shown that the Dicynodon and Labyrinthodon, instead of being toad-like in form, were lacertilian or salamander-like reptiles, with elongated bodies and moderately long tails; that the Iguanodon did not usually stand upon “all-fours,” but more frequently sat up like some huge kangaroo with short fore limbs; that the horn on its snout was really on its wrist; that the Megalosaurus, with a more slender form of skeleton, had a somewhat similar erect attitude, and the habit, perhaps, of springing upon its prey, holding it with its powerful clawed hands, and tearing it with its formidable carnivorous teeth.
Although the Bernissart Iguanodon has been to us a complete revelation of what a Dinosaur really looked like, it is to America, and chiefly to the discoveries of Marsh, that we owe the knowledge of a whole series of new reptiles and mammals, many of which will be found illustrated within these pages.
Of long and short-tailed Pterodactyles we now know almost complete skeletons and details of their patagia or flying membranes. The discovery of the long-tailed feathered bird with teeth—the Archæopteryx, from the Oolite of Solenhofen, is another marvellous addition to our knowledge; whilst Marsh’s great Hesperornis, a wingless diving bird with teeth, and his flying toothed bird, the Ichthyornis dispar, are to us equally surprising.
Certainly, both in singular forms of fossil reptilia and in early mammals, North America carries off the palm.