Nat. Hist. Mus.
A BIG SWAMP-INHABITING DINOSAUR, THE DIPLODOCUS. OVER EIGHTY FEET
FROM SNOUT TO TAIL-TIP
with backbones; they mark a new achievement in the growing powers of vertebrated life.
Moreover some of the Reptiles were returning to the sea waters. Three groups of big swimming beings had invaded the sea from which their ancestors had come; the Mososaurs, the Plesiosaurs, and Ichthyosaurs. Some of these again approached the proportions of our present whales. The Ichthyosaurs seem to have been quite sea-going creatures, but the Plesiosaurs were a type of animal that has no cognate form to-day. The body was stout and big with paddles, adapted either for swimming or crawling through marshes, or along the bottom of shallow waters. The comparatively small head was poised on a vast snake of neck, altogether outdoing the neck of the swan. Either the Plesiosaur swam and searched for food under the water and fed as the swan will do, or it lurked under water and snatched at passing fish or beast.
Such was the predominant land life throughout the Mesozoic age. It was by our human standards an advance upon anything that had preceded it. It had produced land animals greater in size, range, power and activity, more "vital" as people say, than anything the
