This site is the complete 1922 book Animals of the Past, page by page as originally printed — period spelling, remedies and opinions included. About this edition →
Browse the Book
Introduction
2 pages
Fossils, and How They Are Formed
1 page
The Earliest Known Vertebrates
1 page
Impressions of the Past
2 pages
Rulers of the Ancient Seas
4 pages
Birds of Old
3 pages
Flying Reptiles
3 pages
The Dinosaurs
3 pages
Reading the Riddles of the Rocks
1 page
Feathered Giants
4 pages
The Ancestry of the Horse
3 pages
The Mammoth
1 page
See the full table of contents →
Highlights
The Earliest Known Vertebrates
"We are the ancients of the earth And in the morning of the times."
The Mammoth
"His legs were as thick as the bole of the beech, His tusks as the buttonwood white, While his lithe trunk wound like a sapling…
The Mastodon
who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength?"
Reading the Riddles of the Rocks
"And the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read."
The Ancestry of the Horse
"Said the little Eohippus I am going to be a horse And on my middle finger-nails To run my earthly course."
The Dinosaurs
"Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small."