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- Pariasaurus - An Extinct Vegetarian Triassic Reptile
Total length about 9 feet. (Remains found in Cape Colony, South Africa.) - Triceratops - A Huge Extinct Reptile
(From remains found in Cretaceous strata of Wyoming, U.S.A.) This Dinosaur, about the size of a large rhinoceros, had a huge three-horned skull with a remarkable bony collar over the neck. But, as in many other cases, its brain was so small that it could have passed down the spinal canal in which the spinal cord lies. Perhaps this partly accounts for the extinction of giant reptiles. - Genealogical tree of animals
Showing in order of evolution the general relations of the chief classes into which the world of living things is divided. This scheme represents the present stage of our knowledge, but is admittedly provisional. - A Mammoth Drawn on the Wall of the Font-de-Gaume Cavern
The mammoth age was in the Middle Pleistocene, while Neanderthal Men still flourished, probably far over 30,000 years ago. - The Archæopteryx
(After William Leche of Stockholm.) A good restoration of the oldest known bird, Archæopteryx (Jurassic Era). It was about the size of a crow; it had teeth on both jaws; it had claws on the thumb and two fingers; and it had a long lizard-like tail. But it had feathers, proving itself a true bird. - Prehistoric Whistle
A musical relic has recently been exhumed in the department of Dordogne in France, which was constructed in an age when the fauna of France included the reindeer, the rhinoceros, and the mammoth, the hyæna, the bear, and the cave-lion. It is a small bone somewhat less than two inches in length, in which is a hole, evidently bored by means of one of the little flint knives which men used before acquaintance with the employment of metal for tools and weapons. Many of these flints were found in the same place with the bones. Only about half a dozen of the bones, of which a considerable number have been exhumed, possess the artificial hole. - The walking-fish or mud-skipper (Periophthalmus)
It skips about by means of its strong pectoral fins on the mud-flats; it jumps from stone to stone hunting small shore-animals; it climbs up the roots of the mangrove-trees. The close-set eyes protrude greatly and are very mobile. The tail seems to help in respiration. - Mammoth Hunt
To pierce the skin of one of the large animals, such as a mastodon or mammoth, the hunters had to be close to the powerful beast. They hurled or jabbed their spears at the animal, and tried to confuse and immobilize their prey. Perhaps several hunters surrounded an isolated animal waving their arms and distracting it while one or two others speared it. If the animal was wounded, the hunters would have tracked it until it became very weak or went to water to drink. Even a mastodon, wounded and exhausted, or mired in the mud of a shallow lake, would have been relatively easy game for a small group of experienced hunters. - Skeleton of an Extinct Flightless Toothed Bird, Hesperornis
The bird was five or six feet high, something like a swimming ostrich, with a very powerful leg but only a vestige of a wing. There were sharp teeth in a groove. The modern divers come nearest to this ancient type. - Nautilus
A section through the Pearly Nautilus, Nautilus pompilius, common from Malay to Fiji. The shell is often about 9 inches long. The animal lives in the last chamber only, but a tube (S) runs through the empty chambers, perforating the partitions (SE). The bulk of the animal is marked VM; the eye is shown at E; a hood is marked H; round the mouth there are numerous lobes (L) bearing protrusible tentacles, some of which are shown. When the animal is swimming near the surface the tentacles radiate out in all directions, and it has been described as "a shell with something like a cauliflower sticking out of it." The Pearly Nautilus is a good example of a conservative type, for it began in the Triassic Era. But the family of Nautiloids to which it belongs illustrates very vividly what is meant by a dwindling race. The Nautiloids began in the Cambrian, reached their golden age in the Silurian, and began to decline markedly in the Carboniferous. There are 2,500 extinct or fossil species of Nautiloids, and only 4 living to-day. - A Grazing Bison, Delicately and Carefully Drawn, Engraved on a Wall of the Altamira Cave, Northern Spain
This was the work of a Reindeer Man or Cromagnard, in the Upper or Post-Glacial Pleistocene, perhaps 25,000 years ago. Firelight must have been used in making these cave drawings and engravings. - A hunter using an atlatl
Dogs may have been kept as pets, and may have helped in hunting. Meso-Indians developed many new hunting and fishing techniques. They used fishhooks, traps, and nets for catching fish and other small animals, and they used a new weapon called the atlatl (pronounced at′lat′l) to help kill their most important prey, deer. An atlatl was made from a flattish, two-foot long piece of wood and was used as a spear-thrower. It had a hook, made of bone or antler, attached on one end and a hand grip carved on the other end. A stone, clay, or shell weight was sometimes attached toward the hooked end to increase the force of the throw, or perhaps only for decoration. A spear was rested on the atlatl with the end of the spear shaft inserted into the atlatl hook. The hunter held the atlatl grip and the middle of the spear in the same hand, then he hurled the spear from the atlatl. The atlatl acted as an extension of his arm, giving extra power and accuracy to the throw. - The Skull and Brain-Case of Pithecanthropus
The java ape-man, as restored. By J. H. Mcgregor from the scanty remains The restoration shows the low, retreating forehead and the prominent eyebrow ridges.