Water Reptiles of the Past and Present

by Samuel Wendell Williston

Both Broom and Watson believe that this animal was a powerful swimmer, and thoroughly aquatic in habit. To the present writer, however, this does not seem so evident. He is rather inclined to believe that the creature was chiefly terrestrial in habit, living probably in marshy regions, and perhaps seeking its food in shallow waters and in the mud. Aside from the position of the nostrils, which it will be observed are rather close to the eyes, a position so characteristic of many swimming reptiles and mammals, there is but little indication of aquatic adaptations elsewhere in the skeleton.

Fig. 50.—Skeleton of Lystrosaurus,
as restored by Watson, slightly modified.

The skull is of most extraordinary form. The face is turned downward, leaving the nostrils high up, in front of the eyes. The jaws were doubtless covered with a horny shield, like that of the turtles, having a cutting edge. There is a single pair of elongated canine teeth, possibly a sexual character. The lower jaws are heavy and stout, and Watson has said that the animal doubtless had the ability to open its mouth very widely. The quadrate, the bone with which the lower jaws articulate, is firmly fixed to the skull, and there is a single opening on the side of the skull posteriorly, a character common to all the Therapsida.

The vertebrae are stout, and they have stout spines. The tail is remarkably short, stout, and stumpy; it could have been of no use whatever in the water for propulsion or even for steering. The front legs are short and stout; the forearm bones are short, suggesting either swimming or digging habits, and the foot is short and broad. The pelvis or hip bones are massive and were very firmly connected with the backbone by the aid of six vertebrae, a very unusual number in reptiles. The hind legs, as figured, show no indications whatever of aquatic adaptation, unless possibly the very slight shortening of the shin may be so construed. Watson believes that the bones of the pelvis, indicate, aside from its strong union with the backbones, strong swimming powers, but of this again the present writer is very skeptical. The very strong ischia and the flatness of the pelvis are both characters found among American Permian reptiles, which do not show otherwise the slightest indications of water habits.

If then Lystrosaurus was a powerful swimmer, as has been maintained, it is very evident that the hind legs must have been used as the seals or sea-otters use them, to propel and to guide; but they in nowise resemble the legs of these swimming mammals. It seems altogether more reasonable to suppose that Lystrosaurus lived in the marshes, feeding upon vegetable food obtained by aid of its strong jaws and tusks—if the tusks were possessed by both sexes; and that the position of the nostrils may be ascribed to causes like those which brought about their recession in the Phytosauria, and not to strictly aquatic habits. Possibly the animal had habits somewhat similar to those of the hippopotamus; that it was an expert swimmer appears, to the present writer, improbable. The powerful front legs may be indicative of digging habits; the animal may have used them as an aid to its powerful jaws and tusks in uprooting marsh and water plants. However, Lystrosaurus, whatever may have been its habits, was a curious reptile. It was about three feet in length, massive in all its structure, and doubtless of slow and sluggish gait.

CHAPTER VIII
ICHTHYOSAURIA

Early in the eighteenth century a curious work in the Latin language was published by a famous physician and naturalist—a professor in the University of Altorf by the name of Scheuchzer—entitled Querulae Piscium, or “Complaints of the Fishes.” The work was illustrated by many expensively engraved figures of various fossil remains, including one of some vertebrae which the author referred to as “the accursed race destroyed by the flood”! The history of the finding of these famous bones is recorded by Cuvier as follows:

Scheuchzer, while walking one day with his friend Langhans in the vicinity of Altorf, a village and university of Nuremburg, went to the vicinity of the gallows to make some researches. Langhans, who had entered the inclosure of the gallows, found a piece of limestone containing eight dorsal vertebrae, of a black color and shining. Seized, says Scheuchzer, with a panic terror, Langhans threw the fragment of limestone beyond the wall of the inclosure, and Scheuchzer, picking it up, preserved two of the vertebrae which he believed to be human, and which he figured in his book, Piscium Querulae.

About the same time another observer by the name of Baier discovered other and similar vertebrae in the vicinity of Altorf which he described and figured as those of a fish; and there was much earnest contention between Scheuchzer and Baier, as also between their friends, as to their supposed nature. Scheuchzer’s figure was often cited as indubitable evidence of the destruction of mankind by a universal flood, and it was not until nearly a century later that Cuvier showed that the bones were really those of a marine reptile.