"Ten million years old!" murmured Slim. "Whew!"
"And perhaps older," said Professor Blair.
"Get ready, men!" he called to those in charge of the harnessed steers.
Then began a strange scene. The powerful animals from Diamond X ranch, acting for the time being as beasts of burden, leaned forward in the improvised yokes. There was the creaking of pulleys, the straining of ropes and the squeak of wood under pressure.
Then from the great hole that had been dug, and blasted, in the earth, there arose a mass of bones, imbedded in rock—part of the skeleton of an ancient and prehistoric Triceratops.
This fragment of an animal—one of the Dinosaurs that roamed the western part of America from ten to twenty-five million years ago—before the Rocky Mountains were even formed—this fragment gave little idea of the weird beast itself.
I have not time, or space, to tell you more about it than can be sketched in a few words. But those of you who have seen the restoration of these monsters, in museums, will bear me out when I say that they must have been among the wonders of the ancient world.
The Triceratops resembled a rhinoceros as much as anything else, but was much larger. He had comparatively short legs, a short heavy tail and, doubtless, a very thick skin.
His skull was his most remarkable feature. On top were three horns, the one directly over the end of his snout being short, the middle one long and the rear slightly shorter. Back of the last horn extended a huge, bony plate, not unlike the back shield on the helmet of a fireman, and over each eye was another protective plate of bone, doubtless intended, as was the rear one, to guard vital organs.
The Triceratops was the largest animal of his kind, more than twenty-five feet long, and while he may not have matched the Brontosaurus, or Thunder Lizard, which was from forty to sixty feet long, from ten to fourteen feet high, with thigh bones measuring six feet in length (the largest single bones known to science)—while, I say, the Triceratops may not have been a match for the Thunder Lizard, he was a Dinosaur to be reckoned with.