The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-05-24

In the southwestern corner of Ger
many there is a veritable catacomb
of ichthyosaurians.
1t is difficult to believe, but literally
true. that now, even after years of
systematic exploration, $50 to 200
ichthyosaurians are found there every
year.
The quarry owners and workmen in
the Swabian quarries have made reg
ular article of commerce of them. They
calculate that they will find a 'beastie"
for about every square rood of excava-
ton.
Buyers are plentiful. Museums,
private collectors, even schools go
there for material as if they were buy
ing some regular crop. mo horse
trade" says Fraas, lis conducted with
more shrewdness and keenness than
the saurian trade, and no business re-
quires more knowledge of the tricks
of the trade"
The big supply has forced prices
down, so that it is possible to get an
ichthyosaurus Of the common kinds for
from $25 to $50. OF course, specimens
of great scientific value cost more. The
Tyorkmen have learned to examine
GdtA new ililu NlOSGAS " oCC IL IL 10 a
paw" animal or one with aippers.
The creature with paws" ranks far
beyond the cheap ichthyosaurian price
list: it is a much less common reptile
of the Jurassie period, the teleosaurus.
1t belongs to the ancestors of our croc-
odiles, and, like them, it had paws
four regular feet for crawling, quite
different from the ichthyosaurus with
its characteristic whales fiippers.
The ichthyosaurus was an oceanic
animal.
Everything of animal remnants that
has been found in it's company-mol-
lusks. crabs and fish--is from the sea.
Sea creatures were its food. We know
exactly what it's pet dishes were.
Pet IchthyOsaurian Dishes.
A black spot between the ribs of
many specimens shows us where the
creatures stomach was; the investiga-
tor discovers in the petrif1ed contents
of that stomach the distinctive scales
of some fish that are related to our
sturgeon and that thronged the sea
in the older times of world story.
There is also the fossilized debris of
the hard parts of cuttlefish- Neither
to-day nor, demonstratably, at any
time have cuttlefish dwelled in fresh
water. Whatever hunted them must
have been an inhabitant of the ocean,
like our sperm Wnale.
But how could the ocean have wash
ed the shores of Swabia in Germany?
The layman still likes to picture the
world of ancient epoches as a vast
primeval sea, from which the CONT
nents uprose only very gradually in
the form of tiny islands. But if this
obtained at all, it must have been
early in the beginning of earthly
things in the mist of time. In the
period of the dchthyosaurus, things
already had become vastly different.
In that day there were no Alps in
Europe.
If Notwithstanding mountains
stood at all in Europe, they must have
been in another part of it, possibly, in
the northeast.
The Swiss Jurassic Sea-
over the site of the Swiss and Tyro-
lean Alps and the Swabian Jura noun
tains, the ocean rolled its flood. If
there was land at all where the Alps
are now, they were chains of islands
at most, probably resembling the pres
ent South Sea Islands very closely
with coral reefs extending far into the
sea, with forests of tropical fern palms,
over which assembled, here and there,
the smoke pillar of an active volcano.
The deep sea. crowded with animal
swarms, stood over the whole Swabian
and Frankish land of to-day, and it
was far in the northeast that its
mighty waves first met a continent
a continent which poured great rivers
into it from the east, carrying down
mud for the vast alluvial deposits that
now are visible to us in the form of
the black Jura mountains.
The ichthyosaurians must have swum
to this coast even before the beginning
of the true Jurassic period. We find
I.-.ssH - nj. II.
deposits of the Black Forest. With the
Jurassic epoch, when the Swabian sea
spread afar-a great blue mirror OF
considerable depth-the strange guests
arrived in steadily increasing numbers
They must have lived a most gre
gariOus life. Such a wonderful mass
ing together of creatures as is found
in these German ichthyosaurian cata-
combs can only be explained as being
due to the fact that the monsters
dwelled for a long period in a COM
paratively limited locality, made at
tractive, perhaps, on account of its
excellence of food supply.
OF course it would be entirely in
correct to imagine the sea of those old
days as being filled everywhere with
great monsters. The mass of ANNA
life that swan, crawled, trampled
hoped and flew over the planet
throughout all the epochs of geological
time was, no doubt, inconceivably vast
But these myriads were distributed
through millions of years. and there
is no evidence that the number of sin.
gle forms ever was greater at any time
in any one place than they are now.
Only few persons have a clear idea
what immense numbers of specimens
of certain forms of plant and anima
life exist now. Piazzi Smith tells Of
swarm of medusae that he saw neal