Omaha daily bee., 1903-05-31
The Unsolved Riddle of the Icthyosaurus

urally had not been preserved like the
bones, made Il a mighty dificult job for
the early Investigators to imagine how the
animal whose skeletons they had, really app
peared in life.
Remember how many c'oaks and cover
ings make for the completed appearance
of any creature, all of which disappear long
before the slow course of petrefaction be-
gins the process of preservation. How diff
ferent a plucked chicken looks from a liv-
ing one! 1t is as IL the very features that
made 1t distinctive had been taken away.
Now, suppose In addition skim, 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 backward from the skeleton? And yet
the ichthyosaurus has been thus searched
out by keen brains.
Old Richard owen in England, a fine OBJ
server and an anatomical logician of the
first rank, was first to get the idea that the
ichthyosaurus must have had a great
caudal fin like our whale,
IL was a simple circumstance that made
him think so. Every specimen that was
found showed n caudRl vertebra that was
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 decom-
position, before it finally reached its goal
in the deep mud of the bottom of the sea.
Now If there was a heavy caudal fin or
huke, only partially supported by bones, 1t
would begin to dangle as soon as the mus
cles ceased their voluntary supporting ac-
ton. Lower and lower 1t 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 a fin would
necessarily have been fastened, owen de-
duced that this caudal huke must have
been perpendicular to the body like the fins
of fish, and not horizontal as with the
whale.
More than half q century had to elapse
before owens ingenious speculations could
be proved and improved by undeniable
testimony. Then there came the unhoped
for accident of finding n stone slab in the
Swabian ichthyosaurus c0tacombs that had
in 1t not only the cast OF II skeleton, but
also of all the soft parts.
And there it wasl A huge perpendicular
caudal fin. with two big forks like a fish
tail, clear before the eyes OF the living
world.
This same grand specimen showed a high.
triangular dorsal fin. which no owen could
have suspected. And from this dorsal fin
to the tail extended a wavy, conventional
continuous fin like those carried by some
of our water salamanders.
With this new knowledge all comparison
between our lizards and the chthyosaurus
so far as eXternals are concerned, dimin-
ishes to almost nothing; and when one
views the beast carefully, it is best to lay
aside all comparisons and say that tho
oceans marvel, considered strictly, looked
like no other extinct or living creature OF
the ocean.
The ichthyosaurus simply was unique
in form and in everything else.
Our new investigators have accepted this
view and have made for 1t "A distinct order
of r~epetilla, equal in Importance to those
of the lizards, the crocociles and the tur.
ties. The Darwinist. to be sure, Is not con
tent with this. He is all the more DESTROYS
now to find a branching point where tho
Individual form of the ichthyosaurians IL
Joined to the greatest ancestral form ol
reptiles.
Everything appears to point to the fac
that the oldest forms of these reptiles
IL they all did develop from one ancien
form-possessed a certain external sim
ilarity to our living lizards, being land Of
fresh water form with fve-toed feet
showing no tendency to become ripper
like.
Such creatures are found In exceedingly
old formations, much older than TIT
Jurassic stones that contain the ichthy
osaurians. 1t is believed that In thes'