GROUP FIFTH.
The fifth group differs much from the four previous ones. In this and the following groups we pass from the vestiges of birds to those of other animals, some of which are bipeds, some quadrupeds. Many impressions are without any distinct character, belonging probably to the lower animals, to vegetables, and unorganized bodies.
The fifth group comprehends the tracks of an extraordinary animal, the Otozoum.[C] The name which has been given to it is taken from that of an ancient giant, Otus, who with his brother Ephialtes, according to heathen mythology, made war with the gods. These fabled giants were, at nine years of age, nine cubits in width and nine fathoms in height.
The foot is divided into four toes; the two outer of which seem to be connected by a common basis. The inner toe has three phalanges; the second toe, also three; the third and fourth toes, four each. The first is the shortest, the second longer, the third longest, the fourth shorter than the third. It will appear, then, that this track differs from that of birds in the number of toes pointing forwards; these being four, while in birds the forward toes are only three. There is a difference also in the number and arrangement of the articulations.
The track in our possession is twenty inches long by thirteen and a half inches broad. The rock in which it is imbedded is a dark-colored sandstone. President Hitchcock has a slab showing a regular series of tracks of this animal; the distance between the steps being about three feet, and the tracks equidistant and alternate, which would not be the case if the animal had been quadrupedal. In a quadruped, the horse for example, the hind feet are set down near the fore feet, and sometimes even strike them. Hence it must be inferred that the track in question was that of a biped, or of a quadruped which did not use its fore feet in progression, like a kangaroo. We naturally ask, What kind of biped could this have been? Evidently not a man, the size of the foot being too large to admit such a supposition; nor could it have been a bird, the number of toes and their direction not admitting this hypothesis.
Tetradactylous birds, or those which have four toes, have only three of them directed forwards, and the fourth backwards, generally. There are, however, exceptions; some birds have four toes directed forwards: this is the fact with the Hirundo Cypselus and the Pelicanus Aquilus of Linnæus, or Man-of-war Bird. But the articulations are different in the two animals, birds having regularly two, three, four, and five phalanges, and the spur, where it exists, supported by a single osseous phalanx; whereas the Otozoum has three phalanges in the inner and second toe, four in the third and fourth toes. In this last arrangement, the Otozoum is decidedly different from all known birds. It is not likely to have been a tortoise or a lizard. The kangaroo has four feet, and uses only two in progression, moving forward by leaps; also, like the Otozoum, it has four toes; but the size of the toes does not accord with that of the Otozoum, nor is the structure of the foot the same, so far as we know. It has been suggested by Professor Agassiz, that this animal might have been a two-footed frog. Nature had, in those days, animal forms different from those we are acquainted with; and this might have been the fact with the Otozoum.