The Fayette falcon. (Somerville, Tenn.) 190?-current, 1920-04-16

man could meet. And Deinodon was
swift and active, built for speed as
well as power. One could neither
dodge him nor outrun him, and the av-
erage man would be just about the
size of prey that he world consider
suitable for a meal.
The skeleton stands II feet, 5 inches
high-about twice the height of man.
The length from nose to tip Of tail is
70 feet, and for all his slim and ele-
CANT proportions he probably weighed
In life several times as much as any
lion or tiger.
DIR. w. ID. Matthew, curator of the
museums department of vertebrate
paleontology, says that, fortunately for
us, perhaps, the Deinodon was not one
OF the beasts our prehistoric ances-
tors had to contend with. They had
cave-lions and hyenas and wolves and
great cave-bears, not to mention man,
moths and mastodons and woolly
rhinoceroscs those were quite enough.
If they had had lot of carnivorous
dinosaurs into the bargain, they might
have been wiped out altogether. But
the dinosaurs had all become extinct
long before the time of the prehistoric
cave men. The Deinodon lived during
the Cretaceous period of the age of
reptiles-some sixty odd millions of
years ago. if we may rely on the cal
culations based on the alteration OF
radioactive minerals.
At that time, our very, very remote
ancestors were little opossum-llke fur
ry creatures, living in trees and quite
too small and ineonspicuous 10 be
troubled by the huge reptiles who In
those days held the earth in fee. But
In revenge of this disdain, II has been
suggested, our little opossum ances-
tors may have helped to bring about
the extinction of the great dinosauri-
an aristocracy-by sucking their eggs.
= This skeleton was found three wears
ago by Charles II. Sternberg, in the
great canyon of the Red Deer river
In Alberta. The canyon. 500 feet deep
and marglned by steep walls and bad
land gullies, is the richest repository
for dinosaur skeletons that has vet
been discovered. 1t cuts through the
heart of the finest wheat district of the
Canadian West. and the rolling prai-
RE with its waving fields Of grain
above, contrasts picturesquely with the
swiftly flowing river far below at the
bottom of its deep trench, cutting
through the midst of this great Gene
terry of creatures of the long ago.
But in Deinodon's time, the CONN.,
try was very different. both In geog-
raphy and climate. A broad interior
sea, which had once stretched from the
Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic ocean.
was gradually Swallowing and filling
up with marshes. low-lying swampy
forests and savannahs in which the !
Delnodon and other giant reptiles
lived. The climate. IL one may Judge
from the palms, bananas, plantains and
other tropical trees that fiourished
there. was much warmer. but the an
nual growth-rlngs on fossil tree trunks
tof which fine specimen Is on view
in the same hall with the dinosaur
skeletons) show that there was at
lenst dry and rainy season; and
there were many trees-willows and |
tulip trees, sycarores and oaks. that
were very much ike those Of the pres
ent day.
The animal world was far more
strange. Not Only was there no sign
OF man or even anything dIstantly sug-
costing his future evolution. bur not