Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1905-12-06


AT the present moment the remains
Of this denizen of the past are being
shipped to New York in number Of
carefully made boxes, some of the
boxes weighing over two TONS When
these old bones arrive, they will be
examined and cleaned with as much
care as If they were full Of diamonds
for to science this discovery is more
important than that of a great many
diamonds. A large force of skilled
workmen will be detailed to the job
every bone will be placed in its
proper place in the skeleton, missing
bones will be modelled out of plaster
of Paris, and in a few months the
completed skeleton will be placed on
exhibition in the halls of the museum
where visitors may come and see
what this king Of beasts a few mil
lion years ago was like.
Monster Thirty-nine Feet Long.
Enough parts of this animal have
been found to make IT possible to
estimate quite exactly what his size
was. From the end of has tail to the
front of his nose he probably meas
ured about thirty-nine feet, The dis
lance from his skull, as normally
poised, to the ground would be about
nineteen feet-more than three times
the height of an ordinary human
skeleton. A drawing showing the com
parative sizes of the hyrannosaurus
rex and the human skeleton has been
placed on exhibition in the museum.
The difference is shown to be about
like that between an ostrich and an
ordinary barn-yard hen. The present
restoration is, however, entirely pre-
liminary.
OF such importance to science is
this discovery that it has necessitated
a Reconsideration of the carnivorous
dinosaurs of the cretaceous geological
period. Tyrannosaurus now becomes
the name of a new genus. These
flesh-eating dinosaurs of the latter
part of the age of reptiles now show
themselves to have been far more
diversified than had been supposed
The particular hobby of these Great
ures seems to have been to make life
miserable for all the herbivorous di-
nosaurs of the period.
One of the newly-named forms is
that of the dynamosaurs-p powerful
lizards. 1t seems that their particu-
lar prey was the duck-billed dinosaur
or Iguanodont. The Iguanodonts were
partly protected from attack by bony
plates located along the sides of the
body. Another interesting family
was the ornithomimidae-" min
ickers," which was relatively small
but extremely swift footed
The "Tyrant's Prey"
But for real bigaess and other ter
rifying qualities, Mr.. Tyrannosaurus
undoubtedly took the prize He was
large and strong enough to attack the
great three-horned triceratops, one Of
the most interesting of the dinosaur
family, a fine skeleton of which has
recently been set up in the national
museum at Wash ngton. This animal
had a skull which projected upward
over the neck like a flreman's del-
met. and over each eye there was a
massive horn directed forward, a
third, nut much smaller horn being
generally just over the nose. He
was about twice the size Of an ele-
phant, being upward Of twenty-five
feet In Height. lie weighed about ten
tons.
And the most remarkable fact of ali
is that in the opinion of Professor
Osborn, and his fellow scientists in
the American Museum Of Natural His
tory, this same gigantic three-horned
beast was the prey Of the tyrannosau-
rus rex. How scientists should be
able to understand that it was the
flesh of this particular beast that
would be most satisfying TO the king
monster Of them ALL is one OF those
riddles which the man In the street
has not yet solved. But fresh evil
dence of this fact, hitherto only part
1y suspected, Is now coming TO light
and Is being carefully traced out Of
the large collections made by tho
museum during the past few years.
The story Of how this discovery
was made is one Of the romances Of
science. A few years ago Director
Hornaday, of the New York zoologi-
cal park, returning from hunting
trip IN the wilds of Montana, brought
the curator a fogsilized horn which
he had picked up on his trip.
"Is 1t Of any value?' asked the
sportsman of the scientist
"Of no real value In itself" re-
piled the curator; but Of exceeding
value as a clue. We have had many
stray bones Of this animal. but this
find may lead rs 70 place where