: Secrets of Earth and Sea by Lankester E Ray Edwin Ray Sir - Science; Art Primitive; Natural history; Archaeology

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CHAP. PAGE

INDEX 239

EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE

This plate shows the restoration of the extinct lizard, Dimetrodon gigas , lately made by Mr. Charles W. Gilmore of the United States National Museum, by whose kind permission it is here reproduced from the Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum, vol. 56, 1919. It is based upon the study of a very fine skeleton and some hundred bones of allied species, collected by Mr. Sternberg from "the Permian formation" exposed in the vicinity of Seymour, Texas, U.S.A. It is selected for illustration here because its most striking feature-the high dorsal fin-like crest along the middle of the back formed by the elongation of the neural spines of the vertebrae-is a puzzle to the conscientious Darwinian. Professor Case says of it: "The elongate spines were useless, so far as I can imagine, and I have been puzzling over them for several years. It is impossible to conceive of them as useful either for defence or concealment, or in any other way than as a great burden to the creatures that bore them. They must have been a nuisance in getting through the vegetation, and a great drain upon the creature's vitality, both to develop them and keep them in repair." The reader is referred to pp. 127, 128, where a brief discussion of such exuberant growths will be found. The excessive growth of the median fins in the fish Pteraclis allied to the Dolphin which displays changing floods of surface colour as it dies-and in the Australian Blenny called Pataecus-both figured on p. 130-should be compared with that of the strange crest of the grotesque Dimetrodon.

FIGS. PAGE

THE GIGANTIC REPTILE DIPLODOCUS ON LAND 91

STRANGELY-SHAPED FISHES 130

THE LARVAL OR YOUNG FORM OF CRUSTACEA KNOWN AS "THE NAUPLIUS" 164

YOUNG STAGES OF GROWTH OR VELIGER LARVAE OF MARINE SNAILS 181

SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA

THE EARLIEST PICTURE IN THE WORLD

In Figs. 1 and 2 on the next page a cylindrical piece of the antler of a red deer is represented of half the natural size. On it are carved by in-sunk lines certain representations of animals. It was found in the cavern of Lortet, near Lourdes, in the department of the Hautes Pyr?n?es, in the south of France, together with many other remains of prehistoric man. This cavern was excavated and all its contents of human origin carefully preserved by M. Edouard Piette in 1873 and the following years. Drawings of this and other remarkable carved pieces of bone and antler, many in the form of harpoon heads, and of small chipped flint implements, all found in this cave, were published by him. He excavated also several other caverns with great care, and his collections were bequeathed by him on his death to the great Museum of National Archaeology at St. Germain, near Paris, where I have had the advantage of studying them.

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