CH 8 (2/4) - The Real Dragons of Nature

Second part of the eighth and final chapter of Frederick William Hackwood's study of dragons and dragon lore.

FULL ILLUSTRATED TEXT
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The Dinosaurs ("terrible lizards") were all heavy and slow-moving. Some of the beast-footed Dinosaurs were flesh-eating animals, and acted the part of the lions and tigers of those days.

The Dinosaurs were mostly of great size, though much varied in form ; like the crocodile of to-day, they could walk on all-fours, having well-formed limbs, though their powerful-looking tails suggest that they were good swimmers, and their teeth that they fed on fish. Other Dinosaurs, having a different environment, were vegetable feeders.

Some were horned, and all were armoured with a thick hide that was in places double-folded. Some were scaly, some warty, and some protected with fearfully notchy spines. The Stegosaurus was a huge torpid reptile of queer shape standing 20 feet high. Another armoured Dinosaur had powerful hind-legs on which it stood up very much as a kangaroo does. The Brontosaurus was a gigantic Dinosaur measuring nearly 60 feet in length ; while the Atlantosaurus stretched nearly 80 feet, and if it walked on its hind-feet stood up 30 feet high.

The rhinoceros-like Triceratops, or three-horned Stegosaur, was a plated lizard that stood 15 feet high, herbivorous in habit. Specimens have been found in the chalk deposits of Wyoming in America, and another species in the lias at Charmouth in this country, which shows how widely distributed over the earth these creatures were.

As this creature had some resemblance to the rhinoceros, so had the Dinotherium to the elephant type.

Probably no other living creature ever reached more enormous proportions that the Diplodocus, a geologic reptile which from the end of the snout to the tip of the tail measured over 80 feet.

This monster was a vegetable feeder ; had it devoured animal food, a whole colony of breeding animals would have been needed to keep it alive. As it lived chiefly on the leaves and twigs of trees, it must have stripped a fair-sized tree of its foliage at every meal.

The Diplodocus probably lived much in shallow water, in which case it also browsed largely on sea-weed ; it could walk in water 30 to 40 feet deep to feed and raise its head comfortably above the surface for breathing and chewing. Were such a creature alive now, it could easily look over the tops of our houses while walking along the street.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Dinosaurs
• Carnivores
• Triceratops
• Stegasaurus
• Brontosaurus
• Herbivores
• Creatures
• Diplodocus
• Prehistory
• Prehistoric
• Monster