The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1912-12-31
GIlNTS OF YESTERDAY
IN ANNALS OF THE PRESENT
NV HAD ANCESTORS OF AN
ENORMOUS SIZE.
PAT WAS NINE FEET LONG

The DiplodOcus Was 80 Feet Long
and Gould Have Looked Into Fifth
story of Modern Building. Iguan-
odon Would Brighten a Herd of
Elephants.
The diplodocus is believed by sci
.+ists to have been the largest ami
NAL that ever existed.
The largest diplodocus was eighty
..oot long. With it's elongated neck
and body, reared on its powerful
Mind legs and massive tail, it may.
howe been able to lift it's head forty
loot above the ground so that it
.onId have looked into the fifth story
If modern house.
A full grown diplodocus, OF the
largest size, was almost as long as
three Broadway cars hitched togeth-
~ But the center of its back, when
: walked without lifting up it's head
and neck, was only about fourteen
foot above the ground. The body
alone was bigger than that of the
,orgest elephant, but the principal
mart of it's length was made up of
tbo neck and tail. The head was re-
markably small for a creature of
such immense size.
II was a vegetable feeder, and its
ling neck was evidently intended to
enable it to reach the branches of
trees and pull them within reach, or
nossibly to search the bottom OF
shallow lakes for it's food. 1t was
not armored in the elaborate manner
of some of the creatures, such as the
ticeratops and the stegosaurus, but
it's thick hide would have protected
II against the assaults of all but the
most powerful enemies.
There is a wonderful specimen OF
the diplodocus in the Carnegie
museum at Pittsburg, and a few
wears ago Mr.. Carnegie presented
reproduction of the same specimen
to the Natural History Museum in
London, where it made a great SEN
sation.
One of the strangest stories in the
history of geology is that of the dis
covery in 1878, of the skeletons OF
twenty-three of these huge creatures
in chasm among the rocks, in the
coal mines of Bernissart, Belgium,
at depth of 500 feet beneath the
surface of the ground. The ancient
chasm had been checked up, and in
driving their galleries the miners
suddenly broke into it, and beheld
with amazement these remains OF
monsters such as no one had ever
dreamed of. They seemed to have
been plunged into an antedeluv1an
world inhabited by incredible giants.
Biologists fiocked to the place and
the huge skeletons were carefully re-
moved. How they ever got there is
an unsolved problem; but it is
thought that they must have been
swept into the chasm by flood.
The iguanodon gets its name from
the resemblance of its teeth to those
of a lizard called the iguana, which
would brighten nobody, while It's
predecessors of some millions OF
years ago were so terrible on account
of their size alone that the sight OF
one of them might nave put herd
of elephants to flight, if there had
been any elephants then.
This leads to the curious conclu-
sion that some of the animals OF the
earth, which are now of no great
size, had representatives Of mon
strous proportions in primeval times
Apparently some of these creatures
became too large and too awkward to
survive. But, on the other hanu'
many creatures have increased in size
with the progress of time. Among
these are the horse, (which, IN lts
earliest shape, was little animal
not larger than a fox. However, none
of the animals which have Increased
in size have attained dimensions com
parable with those of the monsters
that we have been talking of. Inc
elephant is now the largest land AMI
nal, but he is not as large as MS
the mammoth and the
In Argentina there have been
found remains of gigantic rat-nke
creature which was nine feet long
This is called the toxodon, and lts
to rat is princlpaliy
due to the peculiar form of its front
teeth, which are shaped like chisels'
that, like the modern rat
OIL A .a.1 kn(