Dinosaurs With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections   By: William Diller Matthew (1871-1930)

With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections

by

W. D. MATTHEW

Curator of Vertebrate Palæontology

... ' Dragons of the prime That tare each other in their slime '

[Illustration: SKULL OF THE GREAT CARNIVOROUS DINOSAUR TYRANNOSAURUS IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM.]

New York American Museum of Natural History 1915

DINOSAURS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. The Age of Reptiles. Its Antiquity, Duration and Significance in Geological History. 9

CHAPTER II. North America in the Age of Reptiles. Its Geographic and Climatic Changes. 16

CHAPTER III. Kinds of Dinosaurs. Common Characters and Differences between the various Groups. Classification. 25

CHAPTER IV. The Carnivorous Dinosaurs Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Ornitholestes, etc. 33

CHAPTER V. The Amphibious Dinosaurs Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, etc. 60

CHAPTER VI. The Beaked Dinosaurs. The Iguanodonts Iguanodon, Camptosaurus. 75

CHAPTER VII. The Beaked Dinosaurs (continued). The Duckbilled Dinosaurs Trachodon, Saurolophus. 82

CHAPTER VIII. The Beaked Dinosaurs (continued). The Armored Dinosaurs Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus. 101

CHAPTER IX. The Beaked Dinosaurs (concluded). The Horned Dinosaurs Triceratops, etc. 107

CHAPTER X. Geographical Distribution of Dinosaurs. 114

CHAPTER XI. Collecting Dinosaurs. How and Where they are Found. The First Discovery of Dinosaurs in the West. The Bone Cabin Quarry. Fossil Hunting by Boat in Canada. 116

PREFACE.

This volume is in large part a reprint of various popular descriptions and notices in the American Museum Journal and elsewhere by Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mr. Barnum Brown, and the writer. There has been a considerable demand for these articles which are now mostly out of print. In reprinting it seemed best to combine and supplement them so as to make a consecutive and intelligible account of the Dinosaur collections in the Museum. The original notices are quoted verbatim; for the remainder of the text the present writer is responsible. Professor S.W. Williston of Chicago University has kindly contributed a chapter all too brief describing the first discoveries of dinosaurs in the Western formations that have since yielded so large a harvest.

The photographs of American Museum specimens are by Mr. A.E. Anderson; the field photographs by various Museum expeditions; the restorations by Mr. Charles R. Knight. Most of these illustrations have been published elsewhere by Professor Osborn, Mr. Brown and others. The diagrams, figs. 1 9, 24, 25, 37 and 40, are my own.

W. D. M.

CHAPTER I.

THE AGE OF REPTILES.

ITS ANTIQUITY, DURATION AND SIGNIFICANCE IN GEOLOGIC HISTORY.

Palæontology deals with the History of Life. Its time is measured in geologic epochs and periods, in millions of years instead of centuries. Man, by this measure, is but a creature of yesterday his "forty centuries of civilization"[1] but a passing episode. It is by no means easy for us to adjust our perspective to the immensely long spaces of time involved in geological evolution. We are apt to think of all these extinct animals merely as prehistoric to imagine them all living at the same time and contending with our cave dwelling ancestors for the mastery of the earth.

In order to understand the place of the Dinosaurs in world history, we must first get some idea of the length of geologic periods and the immense space of time separating one extinct fauna from another.