Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1897-03-17
THE GIANTS OF OLD.
PREVIOUS AGES SUPPLY US WITH
 ENORMOUS FOSSIL BONES.

Lizards Three Times the siss Of the Lar Esst Elephant and Turtle Whose shell Looked Like N Hut-Narine Giants and the Remarkable Plated Lizard.
 The belief in a race of giants was once almost universal and held until recent years Even today large skeletons 1 when found are sometimes reported as being those of giant human beings. This was especially true of the period about | the tenth and eleventh centuries, and in the latter a most amazing discovery was reported, which threw the scien- tific world of the time into great excite ment. It was said that the body of Pal. las, the son of Evander, had been dis. ! covered beneath the tomb of the emper. | or Henry III. The bones were en0r- nous, and it is unnecessary to state. ! proved to have belonged to huge fossil elephant. AS late as the fifteenth cen tury Q war of words was waged over | find of large bones. one party claiming that they belonged to the giant Teuto- bochus. In 1857 giant was discovered
 
 requested a learned scientific man, Pro lessor Felix Platter of Basel. to report upon it, and he not only announced the bones as part of a human giant, but made a complete restoration, showing the man 90 feet high. which the proud city adopted as Sn ancestor in the arms of the commonwealth. The design and some of the bones eau still be seen in the college of Jesuits at Lucerne. Un- fortunately for the theory and much to the discontinue of the people who had raised to Q high pinnacle this mighty ancestor, it wes found to be the remains of an elephant
 | Nearly all the mastOdon finds in this country were attributed to giants. but there is no evidence that human giant ever existed over feet in height. and it Is extremely doubtful if this height was ever attained.
 Giants other than human are very com, mon in all branches of the animal king dom-giants in every sense when com pared to their pygmy representatives ot today. Some years ago some laborers in the Senalik hills of India were engaged upon Q government work when they came upon the remains of a turtle thar proved beyond question that these ami mals had their giants in the days of old ! The she'll which the men exposed might have been used as @ shelter for several men, and at first, before it's bony nature was observed, it was thought by the na- ! tives to be hut of some kind. Fortu- an. they were taken out and removed Co the | British museum, where a complete res ! toration of the animal may be seen. The | length of the turtle was 10 feet, it's ! horizontal circumference 25 feet. and its | girth I5 feet, but it was estimated by scientists that this was not an adult, and that when fully grown this huge | creature would display a domelike back | 8 or feet high, giving a total length of l 20 feet. One of the common animals Tn equa- | torial South America and in Central America is the lizard, iguana, which at | tains a length of or . feet and IS con- sidered a large lizard, but 1t was a pyg- my when compared to an ancestor thai | once wandered over England and vari l ous portions of the world. 4 number oi | years ago some workingmen were exca. | vating and blasting in a quarry near | Maidstone, England, when sOme bonef | were uncovered that caused profound | astonishment on the part of the finders The skeleton was perfect, and as 1t was lifted out, bone by bone, their amaze ment increased, and the news was spread | all over the country, attracting large i numbers of people. When the bones | were placed in their proper position. | they were found to be the skeleton of gigantic lizard that when alive must | have been three times as bnlky as the | largest living elephant and stood upon i its hind legs like a kangaroo, tearing | down branches from the highest trees | Such an animal was a slow mover and | sluggish and must have fallen an easy | prey to the human hunters, if they CT isted.
 The marine giants were even more bizarre and remarkable than the land | forms. If We can imagine the little igu- ana heightened out to 30 feet, its back epdnes changed to broad fnlike objects, we form some idea of the appearance of one of the small dinosaurs. Stegosaurus ungulatus, one of the most uncanny and remarkable creatures ever found. It is called the plated lizard, and the best skeleton was found on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains Some of the plates with which this armored lizard were protected were two or three feet in diameter and the spiues over two feet in length. From the fact that the hind limbs were the largest, it is evi- dent that this strange creature could lift itself up and sit like kangaroo. rest ing upon its powerful tail, which, with its enormous spines. must have been terrible weapon.
 A giant from America had a skun that measured eight feet in length. Al most over the eyes were two large horns, c third placed over the nose The great length of the skull was given by huge crest that was protected by ridge of long plates. The mouth of the tricera- tops was protected by horny beak. In life it must have presented a formid- able appearance, with a body clumsy and low like that of a hippopotamus, a long tail like an alligator's, its head calling 10 mind the rhinocerOs. This monster was 25 feet in length and must have been one of the strangest animals of its time-Philadelph Press.
 Sitting Up Late.
 There is nothing so tends to shorten the lives of old people and 60 injure their health as the practice of sitting up late,