Water Reptiles of the Past and Present (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Williston, Samuel Wendell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330030168 ISBN 13: 9781330030165

Verlag: Forgotten Books, 2017

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Excerpt from Water Reptiles of the Past and Present

In many respects the internal structure of the amphibians of the present time is widely different from that of reptiles, though there can be no doubt that the early amphibian ancestors of the modern toads, frogs, and salamanders were also the ancestors of all living and extinct reptiles, and it is a fact that the living amphib ians differ more from some of the ancient ones than those early amphibians did from their contemporary reptiles. Discoveries in recent years have bridged over nearly all the essential differ ences between the two classes so completely that many forms can not be classified unless one has their nearly complete skeletons. We know that some of the oldest amphibians, belonging to the great division called Stegocephalia, were really water-breathers during a part of their lives, because distinct impressions of their branchiae, or water-breathing organs, have been discovered in the rocks with their skeletal remains, but we are not at all sure that some of the more highly developed kinds were not air-breathers from the time they left the egg; indeed, we rather suspect that such was the case.

We are also now quite certain that, from some of the early extinct reptiles - the immediate forbears probably of the great dinosaurs - the class of birds arose, since the structural relation ships between birds and reptiles are almost as close as those between reptiles and amphibians.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Excerpt from Water Reptiles of the Past and Present

It was just forty years ago that the writer of these lines, then an assistant of his beloved teacher, the late Professor B. F. Mudge, dug from the chalk rocks of the Great Plains his first specimens of water reptiles, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. To the youthful collector, whose first glimpse of ancient vertebrate life had been the result of accident, these specimens opened up a new world and diverted the course of his life. They were rudely collected, after the way of those times, for modern methods were impracticable with the rifle in one hand and the pick in the other. Nor was much known in those days of these or other ancient creatures, for the science of vertebrate paleontology was yet very young. There were few students of fossil vertebrates - Leidy, Cope, and Marsh were the only ones in the United States - and but few collectors, of whom the writer alone survives.

Those broken and incomplete specimens, now preserved in the museum of Yale University, will best explain why this little book was written. The author offers it, so far as lies within him, as an authoritative and accurate account of some of the creatures of earlier ages which sought new opportunities by going down from the land into the water. So far as possible he has endeavored to make the text understandable, and, he hopes, of interest also, to the non-scientific reader. He will not apologize for such scientific terms as remain, since only by their use can precision be attained: there are no common English equivalents for them. The reader will find their explanations in the chapter on the skeleton of reptiles, and especially in the illustrations.

The author has had the opportunity during recent years of critically studying nearly all the reptiles described in the following pages, but, if that were the only source of his information, the accounts of many would have been meager. He has endeavored, briefly at least, to mention the names of all those to whom we are chiefly indebted for our knowledge, but in such a work as this it is manifestly impracticable to give due credit to every one.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Forgotten Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1330030168
• ISBN 13: 9781330030165
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 262