The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-11-17
HIS AMBITION REALIZED
THE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF
PROF. AMALITZkY, OF RUSSIA.
He Has Unearthed a Fossil Connecting
Link the Animal and Rep
tile KingdOms-Its Huge Value.
Metropolitan Magazine.


Prof. w. P. Amalitzky, of the Warsaw
University, Russia, has just exhumed the
most wonderful fossil ever discovered by
man and the eyes of the entire scientific
world are looking with envy at the prize
which will soon be given the place of honor
in the new archaeological Museum in St
Petersburg. This skeleton, unearthed in
northwestern Russia, after many weeks of
hardship and hard work, is of an ante
diluvian race of giants who fourished ten
million years ago. 1t was part serpent and
part quadruped, and the forerunner of the
huge dinosaur that dominated animal life
in the following geological age.
Professor Amalitzky is to-day the fore
most scientist in the speciality of paleon-
tology in Russia. Though still a young man,
he is the official head of the department of
paleontology in the great University of
Warsaw. For years it has been his ambi-
ton to establish by means of absolute and
tangible proof the existence of a connect
ing link between the animal and the rep
tile kingdoms. His finding of a complete
fossil of the parieasaurus has been a great
personal no less than a great scientific tri-
umph. 1t is not always possible for a scien-
tifc theorist TO demonstrate beyond logical
dOuDl liz IIull - liz lllCOl l6S- lOLCSSOI
Amalitzky has done so. The whole world
of science is sounding his praises; he has
accomplished the seemingly impossible. He
has brought TO the gaze of modern eyes a
rare and interesting creature that walked
the earth ten million years ago-a period
antedating all history, sacred and profane.
Scientists from days immemOrial have
been engaged in heated controversy over
the. period of time covered by the various
ages of plant and animal life. The esti-
mates of the most exper have been for a
1apo 2 ~ n Of fhn hIa Ia nCa nf time
Fossil remains have their greatest value
in the amount of light they throw upon
this disputed question of time. Of more i'm
portance to the unscientiic, however, as
the fact thai such a fossil as that dis
covered by Prof. Amalitsky furnishes in
teresting evidence of the changing types
and conditions Of animal life. The new
specimen of parieasaurus-new and yet old
er than human thoughts a fresh nick
in the solid timber of evolutionary theory;
IL is a key TO the wonder-room OF scien-
tifc investigation.
INTERESTING FACTS.
To what extent Prof. Amalitsky worked
and suffered TO attain the end he has had
in view for a lifetime can never be fully
narrated. The discoverer himself is too
modest a man 70 go into details OF his
quest. Some facts about the parieasaurus
as it was in life cannot be without interest.
This giant creature did not move about
with the creeping motion of the lizard,
though ii possessed many of the lizards
characteristics. 1t stood and ran like a
true quadruped of the mammalian species.
but 1t had the hideous head of a snake.
This queer animal, of a period too remote
to specify, except in the manner OF the ge-
ologists who figure time IN vast cycles.
lived and had its being in northYestern
/ Russia. on and near the territory now wa
tered by the Dwina river. Now this Is a