Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1896-07-10
BIG SEA SERPENTS.
SCIENTISTS CONCEDE THEY MAY NOT
BE ENTIRELY EXTINCT.
Discovery of the Remains of Ocean Mon
sters-Yale Colleges Collection of Bones
of Huge saurians Of Preadamite Ages.
The Age of Chalk.

1crndpS. Az an cNcllS, SCle1Ce uobS nOU
deny it. In fact, scientific men of late
have come to admit hat such monsters
may prowl the seas.
That there were actually sea serpents in
days gone by is "A certainty. They existed
in enormous numbers-real marine snakes
of gigantic size corresponding in all i'm
portant respects to the modern monsters
of news reports. How is this known?
Simply because their skeletons have been
dug up in great numbers.
In the Peabody museum at Yale college
are the bones of 1, 400 of these sea serpents,
some of which were as much as so feet in
length. Most of them were collected by
Professor o.. c. Marsh. In parts of the
west the remains of these reptiles occur in
astonishing quantities. In one valley
Professor Marsh came across seven of their
skeletons lying close together. When the
animals were alive, the interior basin of
this continent was occupied by a sea. They
flourished during the chalk forming or
cretaceous epoch. In the seas of that dis
ant period they fairly swarmed. Excess
lively voracious and predatory, they held a
sway that must have been u~ndisputcd.
That was the age of monsters, but they
were, of all, the most Formidable.
This was the czech at which the Rocky
mountains were l~v-i.Liu- TO- emerge from
the waters. 1t has been said that the crea-
lures described We're masters OF tie seas.
And why net: WHAT more Formidable ami
nal can he imagined than q fierce, carniv-
erous snake, so feet in lcugth, able, by
means Of its swimming paddles, to make
its way through the water with trCmcn-
dOus velocity? Such was the character of
the masasaurs of the age of chalk. Their
lower jaws were provided with an attach
ment of cartilage by which they were en-
ablcd to open their mouths to an enormous
extent, in the same manner as a modern
snake. Many species of them existed, to
some of which the name tylosaur, lesto-
saul and edcs-saur have been given by
scientists who have dug up their remains.
No fewer than ten species of mOsasaursa are
known to have inhabited the United
States, and the remains of six of these have
been found in New Jersey.
The typical mosasaur was in truth a per-
feet realization of the sea serpent of modern
fancy-if the latter be fancy and not fact.
1t had only one pair of paddles, which were
in front, but these were very powerful. Its
head was flat and pointed, the jaws being
armed with large and fierce teeth. The
enormously long tail was flat and deep like
the tail of a great eel, forming n tremen-
dOus propeller. From what is known of
this formidable reptile there is no difficulty
in picturing to the imagination's eye its
rapid progress through the water, its 1.-THE
movements over the and when it chose to
venture upon terra firma, its ready coil, it's
rapid stroke and the elevation of its head
and vertebral column-literally "A living
pillar towering above the waves or the
brush of the shore swamps. BY thus lift
ing its head on high by means of its long
neck it was able to decry its prey at n dis
lance.
Now and then it happened that one of
those mighty snakes died under circum-
stances which caused its body to become
buried in mud, probably in shallow water.
Eventually the mud hardened and was
transformed into stone, so that the skele-
ton of the creature was preserved through
the ages. Today, millions of years later,
the scientist seeks for sue remains in the
mountains which have been upliftcd out of
thcd depths of the vanished seas of long ago.
A famous hunting ground for fossil rep
lillian monsters is along the slopes of the
Rocky mountains. Through a region of
this kind the scientific explorer travels
with his eyes wide open. If from the face
of cliff he chances to see projecting what
bbh lAhN a H'lANi NAiboNA ~ AlAN hNAl'h VI
water that has cut away the hillside, he
sets a party of men to quarrying with drill,
blast and pickax until whatever is there in
the way of remains has been taken out.
Now and then a great deposit of antedi-
luvian reptiles is struck in this way, in
which case the find" is kept as secret as
possible, being regarded by the d~iscovcrer
as his private mine. If he gave it away,
rival scientists would rush to the spot and
dig out all the animals for their own study
and glory,
The sea serpents of the age of chalk We're
rendered additionally formidable by the
coats of mail which they wore. They were
clad from snout to tail in bony armo
plates. Apparently they were far moro
numerous on this side Of the world than
in the eastern hemisphere, for it is very
rarely that Il fossil monster is discovered
in Europe. In Belgium about a century
ago they camc across a skull of one. which
was regarded as such "a precious curiosity
that Napoleon, hcSieging a town on Il
historic occasion, ordered his gunners to
avoid Smelling a museum where the already
famous rcptilian Uranium was known to
be stored. Ii was subsequently conveyed
to Paris, and when that city was surren-
dered to the allies a special clause was in
serted in the treaty providing that the
skull should not be given up. OF course 1t
was not until long aftcrWard that fossil
hunters came across such numbers of skel-
etons of ancient sea serpents in the new
world.
Science does not assert that some mosa-
saurs may not still exist in the oceans to-
day. If they do, proof of the fact has not
yet been obtained. The best evidence goes
TO show that all of the numerous tribes Of
giant reptiles became extinct long ago.
Nevertheless, it is quite conceivable that
many of the old time monsters dwell even
now in the depths of the seas. What huge
and frightful creatures may not Turk unsus-
pected in such marine abysses as those
which occur in the Atlantic n short dis
lance north OF Cuba and in the Pacific
close by the eastern shores of Japan six
miles or more beneath the surface of the
waterY-St. Louis Globe Democrat.
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