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The Dragons of Old Time-Dinosaurs: Dinosaur

Another remarkably bird-like form of Dinosaur, also found by Professor Osborn at Como Bluffs, is the Ornitholestes, an active little creature, which seems to have walked on its hind legs only, like a bird. The hind limb is extremely bird-like and resembles that of the oldest known bird, Archæopteryx (see p. 213) with its back claw. The hand also is very bird-like, the digits being armed with strong claws. Its bones are hollow (in fact mere shells), another bird-like feature. The present writer was so much struck by the resemblance between this skeleton and that of Archæopteryx, that he even ventured to suggest that possibly this supposed Dinosaur may have been a bird, perhaps the first bird that ever existed!

It is perhaps hardly necessary to remark that to any one thoroughly acquainted with the structures of living animals, a tooth, or a series of teeth, will furnish material from which important conclusions with regard to the structure and habits of an extinct animal may be drawn. So also with regard to some other parts, such as limb-bones, but more especially the bones of which the back-bone is composed (known as vertebræ). Professor Owen has said, "If I were restricted to a single specimen on which to deduce the nature of an extinct animal, I should choose MODELS OF LAELAPS RESTORED.

Reproduced by permission of the American Museum of Natural History, and Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn.

PLATE XVI.

DRAGONS OF OLD TIME a vertebra to work out a reptile, and a tooth in the case of a mammal. Seven or eight different 'characters," he says, "may be deduced from a reptilian vertebra." It is of course impossible for any one to reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone, or a few teeth. Not even Owen could do this-in spite of the rather frequent assertions to that effect one sees in newspapers and magazines!