Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days

The book that introduced the public to dinosaurs: sea-lizards, flying dragons, mammoths and the first horse, drawn from life by J. Smit and told by a clergyman-geologist who thought the museum's 'relics of a former world' deserved a storyteller.

Flying Dragons

4 pages in this part of Extinct Monsters.

Flying Dragons (Geology does better)

"Geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations than in tracing veins of lead or beds of iron."-RUSKIN. THE great…

Flying Dragons: Pterodactyl

Many forms of Pterodactyl are known. Some were not larger than a sparrow; others about the size of a woodcock; yet others much larger, the…

Flying Dragons: Pterodactylus

Pterodactylus spectabilis, from the same strata, also possessed a very short tail, but has a more elegant and bird-like skull. This pretty…

Flying Dragons: Pteranodon

Some of the fragmentary remains from our Cambridge Greensand formation indicate Pterodactyls of enormous size. Thus the neck-vertebræ of…

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days (1900) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored plates, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.