The World Before the Deluge

by Louis Figuier

Fig. 95.—Head of Ichthyosaurus platydon.

In [Fig. 95] the head of I. platydon is represented. As in the Saurians, the openings of the nostrils are situated near the anterior angle of the orbits of the eyes, while those of the Crocodile are near the snout; but, on the other hand, in its osteology and its mode of dentition it nearly resembles the Crocodile; the teeth are pointed and conical—not, however, set in deep or separate sockets, but only implanted in a long and deep continuous groove hollowed in the bones of the jaw. These strong jaws have an enormous opening; for, in some instances, they have been found eight feet in length and armed with 160 teeth. Let us add that teeth lost through the voracity of the animal, or in contests with other animals, could be renewed many times; for, at the inner side of the base of every old tooth, there is always the bony germ of a new one.

The eyes of this marine monster were much larger than those of any animal now living; in volume they frequently exceed the human head, and their structure was one of their most remarkable peculiarities. In front of the sclerotic coat or capsule of the eye there is an annular series of thin bony plates, surrounding the pupil. This structure, which is now only met with in the eyes of certain turtles, tortoises, and lizards, and in those of many birds, could be used so as to increase or diminish the curvature of the transparent cornea, and thus increase or diminish the magnifying power, according to the requirements of the animal—performing the office, in short, of a telescope or microscope at pleasure. The eyes of the Ichthyosaurus were, then, an optical apparatus of wonderful power and of singular perfection, enabling the animal, by their power of adaptation and intensity of vision, to see its prey far and near, and to pursue it in the darkness and in the depths of the sea. The curious arrangement of bony plates we have described furnished, besides, to its globular eye, the power necessary to bear the pressure of a considerable weight of water, as well as the violence of the waves, when the animal came to the surface to breathe, and raised its head above the waves. This magnificent specimen of the fish-lizard, or Ichthyosaurus, as it was named by Dr. Ure, now forms part of the treasures of the British Museum.

At no period in the earth’s history have Reptiles occupied so important a place as they did in the Jurassic period. Nature seems to have wished to bring this class of animals to the highest state of development. The great Reptiles of the Lias are as complicated in their structure as the Mammals which appeared at a later period. They probably lived, for the most part, by fishing in shallow creeks and bays defended from heavy breakers, or in the open sea; but they seem to have sought the shore from time to time; they crawled along the beach, covered with a soft skin, perhaps not unlike some of our Cetaceæ. The Ichthyosaurus, from its form and strength, may have braved the waves of the sea as the porpoise does now. Its destructiveness and voracity must have been prodigious, for Dr. Buckland describes a specimen which had between its ribs, in the place where the stomach might be supposed to have been placed, the skeleton of a smaller one—a proof that this monster, not content with preying on its weaker neighbours, was in the habit of devouring its own kind. In the same waters lived the Plesiosaurus, with long neck and form more strange than that of the Ichthyosaurus; and these potentates of the seas were warmed by the same sun and tenanted the same banks, in the midst of a vegetation not unlike that which the climate of Africa now produces.

The great Saurians in the Lias of Lyme Regis seem to have suffered a somewhat sudden death, partly in consequence of a series of small catastrophes suddenly destroying the animals then existing in particular spots. “In general the bones are not scattered about, and in a detached state, as would happen if the dead animal had descended to the bottom of the sea, to be decomposed, or devoured piecemeal, as, indeed, might also happen if the creature floated for a time on the surface, one animal devouring one part, and another carrying off a different portion; on the contrary, the bones of the skeleton, though frequently compressed, as must arise from the enormous pressure to which they have so long been subjected, are tolerably connected, frequently in perfect, or nearly perfect, order, as if prepared by the anatomist. The skin, moreover, may sometimes be traced, and the compressed contents of the intestines may at times be also observed—all tending to show that the animals were suddenly destroyed, and as suddenly preserved.”[63]

These strange and gigantic Saurians seem almost to disappear during the succeeding geological periods; for, although they have been discovered as low down as the Trias in Germany, and as high up as the Chalk in England, they only appear as stragglers in these epochs; so, too, the Reptiles, the existing Saurians are, as it were, only the shadowy, feeble representatives of these powerful races of the ancient world.

Confining ourselves to well-established facts, we shall consider in some detail the best known of these fossil reptiles—the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Pterodactyle.

The extraordinary creature which bears the name of Ichthyosaurus (from the Greek words Ιχθυς σαυρος, signifying fish-lizard), presents certain dispositions and organic arrangements which are met with dispersed in certain classes of animals now living, but they never seem to be again reunited in any single individual. It possesses, as Cuvier says, the snout of a dolphin, the head of a lizard, the jaws and teeth of a crocodile, the vertebræ of a fish, the head and sternum of a lizard, the paddles like those of a whale, and the trunk and tail of a quadruped.