V
v
Tke Discovery pof a C .
Remarkatle One-
Horned Fossil
Be tke Actual
Ancestor of
tne Strange '
3 east of
Legend'
By Dr. W. H. Ballou.
I" HROUGH the discovery , of the com.
I plete skeleton of a unost extraordi
nary single-horned dinosaur of com
paratively recent date, science has come
seriously to consider that there Is after all
truth tn. the widespread . legend i of the
unicorn. The monster : Just found, It
thinks, xnay he the beast which, fare rise
to the Btory, or It not the actual unicorn
itself, at least its ancestor.
No supposedly fabled animal had so
widespread a popularity as the unicorn.
IWe find legends of It In almost every coun
try of; the world. And
curiously enough not even
the pictures the Chinese
have drawn of their .pe
culiar jspecies vary very
much jfrom those . which
the ancient" chroniclers
and medieval artists set
down us portraits of the
beast. The only real dif
ferences are seen in Its
legs one school making
them very heavy, the
other i slender, and horse
like. -
The outstanding feature
of the unicorn upon which
all agree was a long horn A Crested Dinosaur of the Same Type as the Fossil Found and Which Wat Perhaps
rising from the top of Its
nose. I In a Bestiary writ
ten by a Norman scholar in the thirteenth
century the following interesting descrip
tions Is found:
"The unicorn has but one horn in the
middle of its forehead. It is the only ani
mal that ventures to attack the elephant;
and so sharp Is the nail of its' foot that
with one blow It rips up the belly of that
most terrible of all. beasts. The hunters
can catch the unicorn only by placing a
young virgin In the forest which It haunts.
No sooner : does this i marvelous animal
descry the damsel than it runs toward her,
lies down at her feet and so suffers Itself
to be taken by the hunters"
Pliny, the Roman naturalist, out of
whose account of the unicorn most of the
modern unicorns have been described and
figured, records it as "a very ferocious
beast, similar in the rest of its body to a
horse, with the head of a deer, the feet
of an elephant, the tail of a boar, a deep
bellowing voice and a single black horn,
two cubits In length, standing out in the
middle of its forehead." He adds that
"it cannot be taken alive"; and some such
excuse may have been necessary in those
days for not producing the living animal
upon the arena of the amphitheatre. : .
The Bible mentions the unicorn no less
than eight times, all in the Old Testament.
The mentions are as follows: -
"God brought them out of Egypt: He
hath as it were a strength of an unicorn."
(Numbers, Chapters 23, Verse 22.)
"His glory Is like the firstling of the bul
lock and his horns are like the horns of
'unicorns." (Deuteronomy. Chapter 33,
Verse 17.) ""
' "Will the unicorn be willing to serve
thee or abide by thy crib?" (Job, Chapter
89, Verse 9.)
"Canst thou bind the unicorn with his
. band in the furrow? Or will he harrow
THE OREGOK
Monster Vhick May
the Ancestor of That Fossil and
the valleys after thee?"
(Job, Chapter 39,
Verse 10.)
"Save me from the lion's mouth, for
thou hast heard me from the horns of the
unicorns." (Psalms, Chapter 22, Verse 21.)
"He ' maketb them also to skip like a
calf: Lebanon and Siron like a , young
unicorn.. (Psalms, Chapter 29, Verse 6.)
"But' my horn shalt thou exalt like the
horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed
with fresh oil. (Psalms, Chapter 92,
Verse 10.) -, ";y . y : .. V- :
"And the unicorns shall come down with
him, and the bullocks with the bulls: and
their land shall be soaked with blood and
their dust made fat with fatness." (Isaiah,
Chapter 3C, Verse 7.) .; W
Aelian, another ancient writer on nat
ural history, describes the unicorn : as
about the size of a horse, reddish-yellow
In color, excelling in swiftness "through
the excellence of its feet andof its whole
body.-. K -, :
"Like the elephant,' says Aellan, "It
has inarticulate feet and It has a boar's
tail. One black horn projects between the
eyebrows, not inwardly, but with a certain
natural twist, and terminating in a sharp
point. It has, of all animals, the harshest
and the most contentious voice. It is said
to be gentle to other beasts approaching
it, but to fight with its fellows. ,
Professor Charles Gould, an eminent
English scientist, believes that "a creature
whose existence has been affirmed, by so
many authors, at so many different dates,
and from so many different countries, can- -not
be, as mythologlsts demand, merely
the symbol of a myth.-. There is a possible
solution which does not appear , to have
struck ! previous writers on the subject,
; namely, that the unicorn may be merely a .
hybrid produced occasionally and at more
or less rare intervals. By accepting this
view we could explain the extraordinary
combinations of character assigned to It,
and the discrepancies that exist between ,
SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND, SUNDAY ' MORNING,
An Ancient
Woodcut Il
lustrating the
Legend of the
capture or
tne Animal
Using as Bait
a Girl of the
Utmost Mod
esty and
Purity.
Also of the Unicorn.
the qualities of courage and gentleness
ascribed to It by. western and Chinese au
thors. A crpss between some equine and
cervine species might readily result in a
unicorn offspring, ; and either the coura
geous qualities of the sire or the gentle
ness of the dam might preponderate, ac
cording to the relations of the species in
- each of theInstances."
The use of the unicorn in heraldry has
been made by the. oldest royal families,
some of the most famous crests bearing it.
The dinosaur which has ; aroused the
Interest of science in the unicorn legend
was found in northwestern Montana. As
many of the fossils discovered in this same
region have their counterparts both in
Europe and Asia, the location of the find
is significant. As may be. seen by the
photograph of the skeleton, the legs of
this monster are unusually massive. Their
size conforms to Pliny's description 6f "the
feet of an elephant" and, also, to Aelian's
remark that 'like the elephant it has
inarticulate feet.
There la no doubt about its horn. And
now we come to a very curious fact. This
creature, despite its ferocious aspect, was
herbivorous that is, it was not a flesh
eater, but a grazer like the horse and the
cow. This being so, it follows that the
monster lacked the ferocious qualities of
the carnivore or flesh eater. V
Do we find in this the basis of fact which
Spencer said lay at the bottom of all
legends that is. the reason for. the very
extraordinary statement that the unicorn
was a gentle beast, irresistibly drawn to
maidenhood, which, of course, is presum
ably a gentle state? -...
In the fact that this horned dinosaur
was herbivorous lies a very real scientific
mystery, indeed. How and why did the
hor evolve on certain types of animals
and not on others? What started the first
born and how was it developed and handed
iyA"n to posterity?
.(C) 1920. International Feature Service. Ine.
The Fossil Remains of a
Horned Dinosaur,
kWhose Remarkable
Similarity to the
Description of the . -Unicorn,
and Other
Interestinsr Things
About It, Have Made
Science Believe That It
or a Descendant May
Actually Have Been
the Fabled Animal.
Men of science, noting the
presence of horns on herbir
orous animals, only; have as
sumed that they were evolved
for defense. But not all hay
eaters are provided with
horns. The cow has them,
hut the horse has not Hence
men of science deduced that
speed was given the horse to
replace the necessity of horns
for defense. Other men of
science ave Hot taken much
stock In these or any other
theories. Why? ; Because
with a number of types of
mammals, only the males
have horns. Another anomaly
is scored with the antelope.
by Here we have the greatest
speeder, also? with horns.
Andrews drove an automo
bile sixty miles an hour, but
the antelopes kept well in
front of him. So speed did
not, at least in some in
stances, replace ' horns. Jn
fact, there are an enormous
number of species ot
herbivorous mammal.'
which hare both horns
and terrific speed.
Following the dis
o. co very of the remains
, of this one-horned an
imal unicorn, or as
it has been scientifi
cally named' Brachy.
ceratops there has
been an intensive in
vestigation to trace the
origin ' of horns, still
further back. This has had
results. Dr. W. D. Matthew,
peculiar
at the
History,
American Museum of Natural
New York, found among the fossil remains
collected - by an expedition in Texas a
Bkull with two .pairs of rugosities for
horns, over the prefrontals and nasals.
He named this pre-reptile Tetraeeratops,
meaning four-limbed horned reptile. This
creature, existed in the Permo-Carbo'nlfer-ous
Age, some 30,000,000 years ago. So
far as there are fossils to check up, horns
appeared with him before true reptiles
were evolved and disappeared with him.
No fossils show horns again in earth's his
tory until the remains of an Upper Jurassic
carnivorous jdisosaur. -Ceratosaurus nasl
cbrnis, were "unearthed in Colorado 15,00,0,
000 years later. Again horns disappeared,
to be revived again in the Lower Creta
ceous times, several millions of years later,
on the nose of Brachyceratops. ; v
In the above we have .the anomaly, the
mystery, : Both Tetraeeratops, the pre
reptile and Ceratosaurus, the dinosaur,
were carnivores that is, ate flesh while
the later Crachyceratops and still later
descendants of his, and the still later mam
mals, were all herbivores, or vegetarians! :
Naturalists say, "Well, carnivores bad ,
powerful cutting teeth and didn't need
horns for defense since they had offensive
weapons. Even so, the contention is not
a scientific reason for the change from
carnivores to herbivores, for the origin of
the horn or for its remarkable appear
ances and disappearances. What these
investigators have concluded, however, is
a matter of much interest.
Osborn remarks: ; "The herbivorous
types of dinosaurs appear in Upper
Cretaceous times, and are the aggressively
ana defensively horned Ceratopsia, in
which two or three front horns evolved
step by step, with a great bony frill pro.
Great Britain Riyht Eeserred,
JULY 18, 1920.
l I'l.'.. " f
'-T9, -f
Boecklin'a Famous J Picture of "The
Unicorn and the Maiden' Illustrating
One Idea of What the Unicorn Looked
Like. Below Are Two Crests of Noble
English Families Showing the Utiliza
tion of the Unicorn in Heraldry.
tecting the neck. . Bucn evolution tooic
place stage by stage with the evolution of;
the "predatory mechanism of carnivorous'
dinosaurs, so that the climax of ceratop
sian defense of Trlceratops was reached,
simultaneously wjth the climax of offense
in Tyrannosaurus. This is an example ot
counteracting evolution: of offensive and
defensive adaptations, analagous to that .
we Observe to-day in the evolution of
lions, tigers and leopards, which counter-'
acts horned cattle, and : the antelopes of
Africa; and again in the wolves" simul-1
taneously with horned bison and deer inj
our northern hemisphere. It is a caaei
where the struggle for existence isveryl
severe at every stage of development and!
: where advantageous or disadvantageous ;
chromatin predispositions in evolution ,
come constantly under the law of selec-
. Uon." -;; ' i v. , -r-, . -;
t And there; is no reason why modified
descendants ' should not have existed in
Pleistocene times with early man. ,
Brachyceratops Is regarded as the foun
der of bony horns as distinguished from
sheath horn, which Is chemically an exten
sion of the skin in hardened form. ; This
honor is due him, notwithstanding the prior
. attempts at horn building, by the email
pelycosaur before the age of true reptiles
and the odd appearance of a horned car
nivorous dinosaur In the forepart of dino
saurian evolution. , Brachyceratops -had a
real bony horn on his ; snouta ; stout,
though divided, horn with which he made
it lively for such carnivorous dinosaurs as
attacked him. He also had the beginnings
of a pair of horns over theyes. : Solar as
the fossil goes, his ancestors are unknown,
but his known descendants were comprised
; In seven genera, all of which improved
their horns and frills for defense. He was
about eighteen feet long' and ten feet high.
Jhe discovery of the animal which had
the honor or bearing the first true horn
falls to Dr. Charles W. Gllmore of the
U. S. Geological Survey. He has super
intended . the ; construction of a - lifelike
model of the reptile, now on exhibition In
the National Museum,; which better Illus
trates Its characteristics that any other
pose could do. You know the habit of car-,
nlvores: they always spring at the neck of
the animal marked for a meal ticket. A
glance at Gilmore's model of this brachy
ceratops, or unicorn's grandfather; shows
it crouched in such an attitude that the
large, bony frills, ,or ;Uzabetbian ruffs,"
completely, shield the necks by lying flat
on them. , -
It may well be that the legend of the
unicorn is a prehistoric memory of one of
the descendants of this strange dinosaur.
It may have , had certain peculiarities
which struck-the. imagination of very
primitive man who encountered it. The
evolution of the-unicorn from this ruffed
monster to the fleet and graceful horned
beast of legend is not more remarkable
than the evolution of the modern horse of
to-day from ; the little, almost- rat-like
creature which was Its forefather ages
ago. Nor is it more remarkable than -the
shrinking of the iguanodon lizard or the
armadillo from their- colossal ancestors.
Just as the legend of the dragon is with
out doubt a memory of man of the gigan
tic flying lizard, so the unicorn may be a
'form of life which overlapped the period
or man s consciousness and Has since been
wiped out ot the page of earth, except for
Its fossils in the rock
More and more science Is leaning to
ward the dictum of 8pencer that no mythl
can exist. Without a basis of fact and
f science is beginning to see that its real
duty fa not to scoff at the myth, but find
out what that basis of fact Is which gay
birth to It, . . , .