Fig. 39.—Lower tooth of Leiodon.
1. Side view. 2. Profile.
Of late years many fine specimens have been discovered in North America, and the labours of Leidy, Marsh, and Cope have been of the greatest service in completing our knowledge of this strange group of saurians. In the American Cretaceous seas they ruled supreme, as their numbers, size, and carnivorous habits enabled them easily to vanquish all rivals. Probably some of them were seventy-five feet in length, the smallest being ten or twelve feet long. In the inland Cretaceous sea from which the Rocky Mountains were beginning to emerge, these ancient sea-serpents abounded; and many were entombed in its muddy deposits. On one occasion, as Professor Marsh rode through a valley washed out of this old ocean bed, he observed no less than seven different skeletons of these monsters in sight at once! The same authority mentions that the Museum of Yale College contains remains of not less than 1400 distinct individuals. In some of these the skeleton is nearly if not quite complete; so that every part of its structure can be determined with almost absolute certainty.
According to Professor Cope of Pennsylvania University, who has made a special study of this group of extinct saurians, fifty-one species have been discovered in North America, in the States of New Jersey, Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Nebraska. The same authority has shown that they were characterised by a wonderful elongation of form, especially of the tail; that their heads were large, flat, and conical in shape, with eyes directed partly upward; that they were furnished with two pairs of paddles like the flippers of a whale. With these flippers, and the eel-like strokes of their flattened tail, they swam with considerable speed. Like snakes, they were furnished with four rows of formidable teeth on the roof of the mouth, which served admirably for seizing their prey.
But the most remarkable feature in these creatures was the arrangement for permitting them to swallow their prey whole, in the manner of snakes. Thus each half of the lower jaw was articulated at a point nearly midway between the ear and the chin, so as to greatly widen the space between the jaws, and Professor Cope thinks that the throat must consequently have been loose and baggy.
Professor Cope, however, in giving the name Pythonomorpha to this ancient group, has pressed his views too far, and dwelt unduly on their supposed relationship with serpents. Other authorities regard them as essentially swimming lizards, with four well-developed paddles; and this is probably the right view to take of them.
The following graphic account of the region where Professor Cope has discovered the skeletons of many sea-serpents, and of their habits and aspect when alive, is taken from his well-known work on the Cretaceous Vertebrata of the West.[36] After describing this region as a vast level tract between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, he says, “If the explorer searches the bottoms of the rain-washes and ravines, he will doubtless come upon the fragment of a tooth or jaw, and will generally find a line of such pieces leading to an elevated position on the bank or bluff, where lies the skeleton of some monster of the ancient sea. He may find the vertebral column running far into the limestone that locks him in his last prison; or a paddle extended on the slope, as though entreating aid; or a pair of jaws lined with horrid teeth, which grin despair on enemies they are helpless to resist; or he may find a conic mound, on whose apex glisten in the sun the bleached bones of one whose last office has been to preserve from destruction the friendly soil on which he reposed. Sometimes a pile of huge remains will be discovered, which the dissolution of the rock has deposited on the lower level; the force of rain and wash having been insufficient to carry them away.”
[36] Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, vol. ii., 1875 (Cretaceous Vertebrata).