The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-07-19
WHAT MONSTER KILLED
THE MONSTER SAURINS?
The Thing, Greater Than They, From Which lch-
thyosaur. PIesioSaur and TeIeoSaur Fled.

BY PROF. WILHELM BOELSCHE.
Copyright, 1903, by T. C. Mcclure.

| years and more thousands.
Then the dodos adapted themselves
according to natural law to the care
| free life; they became enormously fat
and lazy, their wings lost their power
and at last became quite incapable of
raising the heavy bird from the
ground.
This surely was no "senility.' This
| was Hannibal in Capua, the result of
| a luxurious life, that was safe so long
as the beautiful days continued, and
| that could have continued with them
through eternity.
But one day man arrived on the
island of Mauritius. He appeared in
the form of Dutch sailors, hungry as
bears, in the days when man had not
begun to travel in swift steamers that
carried timed foods.
Man Ate the DOdO.
Man and dodo entered into COMPETE
ton at once. Man wished to live and
the dodo wished to live also. Within
u century Q59S-1693) the dodos had
been eaten up systematically by the
| Hollanders.
When the century ended the last
dodo had gone the way of all flesh,
and the species dodo, one of the most
remarkable bird-forms that ever lived
-fiightless pigeons as big as turkeys
had ceased to be- A species had ex-
pired, but certainly not from age.
Could the same thing have happened
TO the ichthyosaurus?
We may set the arrival of man on
the stage into times so early that it
would put his origin into the Tertiary
period, yet even in the first third of
that epoch, wherein the ichthyosaurus
is disappearing or has already disap-
peared. 1t is impossible to find that
man could have existed in a form that
would have been dangerous to the
huge, oceanic. robber saurians. We.
to-day with united powers and with
the instruments of industry, have not
been able to exterminate the whale
| centuries after the Invention" of the
ship.
So we must ask: Did the ichthyo-
saurus become the victim of a battle
| for existence with another monstrous
animal of the ocean in the time when
| he had become lazy and defenseless
as a result of thousands of years OF
unchallenged mastery of the sea?
There are some curious facts in
| which the answer may be hidden.
In the end of the seventies Marsh
| found, in Jurassic formations of North
America, genuine ichthyosaurus
which, strange to say, was entirely
toothless. The gums had neither
/
have been planted. The resolution of
the leg-bones into fins had pro-
ceeded to so extreme a stage in this
| specimen that ii was evident that a
late, highly-developed species had been
found. Since then traces of related
forms have been found in England in
the latest Jurassic formations and In
the chalk period. The American
| species was christened Baptanodon.
/ a 10 fHbf
saurus?
IchthyosauruS, the terrible armed
robber, who had chewed armored
fishes and stony cuttle-fishes with
ease, evidently had given up" mis-
whole dental apparatus in some places
late in his time. That means that he
| had adapted himself to circumstances
in such manner that he had become
as good as helpless against any new,
biting creature of the sea-
Involuntarily one is reminded again
| of the whale and his relatives.
The dolphin still has powerful
| teeth. But the enormous Greenland
beasts, only has 'fringes" that give
us whalebone. Those fringes evil
| IDENTIFY are very convenient for him.
With them he sleeves the ocean for
myriads of little creatures which nour-
ish him. What does he, the colossus
|
Plainly this whale proves by exam
pie that adaptation can lead to an
elimination of the teeth. The birds
lost them, too; In the chalk period
their bills still were toothed; then
came the toothless beak; the free life
in the air without competition made
teeth unnecessary.
1t is apparent that the ichthyosau-
rians achieved ease in this manner in
the end of the Jurassic period, when
there were no enemies that demanded
| battle
IchthyOsaur's Death Sentence.
And yet with such remuneration Of
their fighting powers the ichthyosau-
rians pronounced their own death
sentence like the poor bird dodo. For
the foes did arrive; with continuing
Development times altered, and what
had not been, developed itself. So
there arose the old question of life or
death-death being the answer, of
course, for the side that had become
denuded of defense through its long
term of easeful power.
Incomplete as our knowledge is
one thing we know-at about the COM
| ing of Tertiary time something de-
cisive happened in the ocean. = 1t was
no mad catastrophe that choked un-
counted masses of animal forms in
| steam or carbonic acid gas. 1t was
something that happened with the nat
ural development of things.
New hunters appeared in the ocean
hunters that had not been there in
such form or might before.
There was first the family of sharks
1t grew Unexpectedly at that time. To
our ina gination the shark still is the
| most horrible creature of the sea, and
| with reason. Shark forms greater and
more savage than any now living
surely meant for that ancient sea the
| graveSt danger that could be imag-
ined for other living creatures. And
In the beginning OF Tertiary time
sharks were developed that exceeded