Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-05-23
oped faculty for holding a large supply OF
air in the chest for the purposes of diving.
A Marvel of Construction.

A marvel or COnSLruCC1Ou.
However one may view the ichthyosaurus,
he proves to be a marvel of practical ana
tonic construction. It has been said. and
with justice, that no engineer of our think
Ing and brooding time could improve this
apparatus; and, in truth, everything that
we are doing in this line today is only
cropping experiment as compared with what
the process of adaptation did in the gray
antiquity Of time for the beasts of the Jul
raSSic sea.
The most beautiful Of swimming appli-
ances were the legs. Let the reader think
of an ordinary lizard leg. In the main
points it resembles our own-with upper
thigh shank and foot that is formed of
root or parent limb and five toes.
With the ichthyosaurus the case is diff
ferent entirely. The leg has become true
fin almost throughout. This fin Is support
ed by the short. thick bone OF the thigh
Thence downward everything-shank, loot
and toes-is resolved into more or less loose
bony segments that lie bedded in soft flesh.
Sometimes we find as many as hundred
of these bones, and when we count them
| exactly and try to order them into toes. we
get not five, but six, even eight and nine
such toes, naturally making the paw
f1ipper'' immensely more broad and power
fui for swimming purposes.
The ichthyosaurus had no armor
In this many dragons of his time were
far superior to him. He was only slightly
| scaled. so slightly that to the eye he APP
peared merely as a creature with q some
what wrinkled skin.
But IL he lacked scales he had a more
striking popularity In entirely loose flesh
fins that he possessed in addition to his
fiippers.
Ignorance of these flesh fms which natur-
ally had not been preserved like the bones,
made it q mighty difficult job for the early
investigators to imagine how the animal
whose skeletons they had, really appeared
in life.
Triumph Of Human Deduction.
Remember how many cloaks and cover
ings make for the completed appearance Of
any creature, all Of which disappear long
before the slow course of petrefactfon be-
gins the process Of preservation. How diff
ferent plucked chicken looks from Hv-
ing one 1t is as If the very features that
made it distinctive had been taken away
Now, suppose in addition skin, flesh, all
external appendages like comb and wattles
were missing-who Is so inventive as to be
able to invent the type chicken by work
ing backwards from the skeleton? And yet
the ichthyosaurus has been thus searched
out by keen brains.
Old Richard Owen in England. fine
observer and an anatomical logician of the
first rank, was first to get the idea that the
ichthyosaurus must have had a great eau
dial fin like our whale.
1t was simple circumstance that made
him think So Every specimen that was
w
broken near the tail end.
The dead body, reasoned Owen, no doubt
would drift for a while on the open sea,
buoyed by the gases engendered. in de-
composition, before 1t finally reached it's
goal In the deep mud of the bottom of the
sea. Now If there was heavy caudal fin
or fiuke, only partially supported by bones.
1t would begin to dangle as soon as the
muscles ceased their voluntary supporting
action. Lower and lower it would sink
until, at last, its great weight broke the
| end of the vertebral column.
From the form of the vertebra to which
| the great muscles of such fin would
necessarily have been fastened, Owen de-
| Quoted that this caudal fluke must have
| been perpendicular to the body like the
| fins Of fish, and not horizontal as with the
whale.
| More than half century had to elapse
before OWENS ingenious speculations could
| he proved and improved by undeniable tes-
tfmony Then there came the unhoped- for
| accident of finding stone slab In the
| Swabian ichthyosaurus catacombs that had
| in 1t not only the cast or skeleton, Dut
also of all the soft parts.
| And there 1t was! huge perpendicular
caudal fn with two big forks like fish
| tail. clear before the eyes OF the living
world.
This same grand specimen showed high,
TRIANGULAR dorsal fin. which no Owen could
| have suspected. And from this dorsal fin
to the tail extended wavy. conventional,
Continuous fin like those carried by some
of our water salamanders.
A Monster That Was Unique.
with this new knowledge all comparison
between our lizards and the ichthyosaurus
SO far as externals are concerned. dimin-
ishes to almost nothing: and when ono
views the beast carefully 1t Il best to LAP