Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    whose imperfect respiratory system perhaps fitted them for enduring an atmosphere not yet quite suitable for birds or mammifers.* The specimens found in the muschelkalk are allied to the croco- dile and lizard tribes of the present day, but in the latter instance are upon a scale of magnitude as much superior to present forms as the lepido- dendron of the coal era was superior to the dwarf club-mosses of our time. These saurians also combine some peculiarities of structure of a most extraordinary character. The animal to which the name tchthyosaurus has been given, was as long as a young whale, and it was fitted for living in the water, though breathing the atmosphere. It had the vertebral column and general bodily form of a fish, but to that were added the head and breast-bone of a lizard, and the paddles of the whale tribes. The beak, more- over, was that of a porpoise, and the teeth were those of a crocodile. It must have been a most destructive creature to the fish of those early seas. * The immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptilia are, a low temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of food. Requiring little oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere containing a less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than what now obtains.
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