The Oregon daily journal., August 22, 1920, Page 56, Image 56

THE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND, SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 22, 1920.
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I' i .
Science Reconstructs Qrie of tke
Wieirciest of Prekistonc jMonster?
witk Hollow Bones, Great Air
GavitiesJVitkm Tkem and a S eries of
Enormous Plates Along Its Back for
Coasting TkrougLtke
Ttw Reconstruction
UACfriC - AU.th!BirAj. ,jt . T ; :..'Vrii. i- ;! ' i Skull of th Clidinr
VV-A ' ii I j j T A-A t I vf lr 3 rfc t-t-i PI virion, auioiavm i in in
Movable riates r , C7 . i . - w" "
Which Set-red It as r y- 1 f ! T "I LIttI Two-and-a-v
(iSL tic Glidincf Machine HBj:eL"
or natural, nutory)
By DrJ W. H. Ballou. .
BACK about a million or so years ago,
daring what la now called the Juras.
eto Period, when most of the. earth
was a steaming swamp. Nature carried on
what was certainly her most fantastic ex.
perlmenta in animal making. This was
the time of the1 dinosaurs, gigantic reptil
lian creatures whose weird, nightmarish
hapes were strongly' suggestive that
Mother Nature ! had an extreme case of
creative indigestion after a course of cos
mic Welsh rarebit. As a matter of fact
he was specializing In bulk at that time
at the expense ot brain. ; 'Ages afterward
she had learned her lesson and the dino
saurs were wiped out ; ,?V
But among this collection of monsters
none h&a so Interested modern men ot
science, who by studying the fossil book
of the earth are restoring this erased page,
. than the creature named ' Stegosaurus.
etegosaurus ran! from fourteen to twenty
eight feet between the shoulders of his
forelegs and those of his tack legs. His
tall ran about the same length. : Neck and
bead ranged from six to ; ten feet. The
average Stegosaurus was about thirty feet
long from the tip of his bird-beaked head
to the end of his pronged tall, and stood
about twelve feet high at the hips. The
forelegs8 jwere extremely short;: Jthe back
legs almost three times as long and in a '
manner kangarooish. ; It was not, however,
bis size that aroused the curiosity . of
science and set Stegosaurus apart. It was
a most extraordinary equipment of huge
plates In double file all along its back. .
For nearly half a century every paleon
tologist in the world has attempted to ex
plain the reason for these plates and there
have been more harsh words passed over
the remains Stegosaurus -than overany
other animal past or present. -
This controversy has now been set defl
, nltely at rest by! the astonishing discovery
that In the Stegosaurus Nature was trying
ber apprentice hand at the first aeroplane!
This discovery came about through, the
, finding of a perfect specimen with, skull
end the' masses of skeleton bones joined
together Just as they were in life," a speci
men so complete that from it the experts -of
the National Museum at Washlngton, '
where it was sent, had no difficulty-In re.
. constructing the I whole musculature of the
creature and what they believe to be al
most a photographic ; appearance, ot it in
. ltfa ; ' - ;.: ' i
The first inkling of the truth came whea
It was certain that the series of myster
ious plates which ranged from just behind
its head two-thirds down Its tail were not
attached to the spinal column, as had been,
thought. They were not bone, but of a
horny nature, flexible and easily manipu
lated by the muscles of the great body.
The plates were, in fact, gliding sur
; faces. 'Immeasurably like those . of the
planes of to-day,l which could be .raised or
lowered at the instance of their trwners,
. carrying the huge bodies through the air
In gigantic leaps or enabling their owners
to glide down through the air. from one
elevation to a lower one. Furthermore, it-,
was found that the weight of this dinosaur
was not nearly i so great as had been
. surmised. Its great "bones were hollow,
like those of the birds, and contained large
air chambers. There is evidence that the
plates or planes were very light and buoy-
ant. . ;;v.'vn , J y. 4; .v?;,.;?V
The little flying ' squirrel progresses
through the air i to-day somewhat as this
dinosaur dkr ages ago. Its skin forms a
surface by which it Is enabled to volplane
from heights to the ground or from limb to
limb of tbe trees. Back in the steaming
Jurassic time the Stegosaurus was the
weird and titanic flying-squirrel of it3 age.
With its bug plates placed alternately on
each side of its back it could depress these
; to form planes that buoyed it in a swift
rushirom elevation to elevation, or that
like the old gliders from which the aero-
s plane was evolved, lifted up the body un.
"der the drivlns impetus of the enormous
" bind legs, carrying it in flight for hundreds
; of feet. A weird spectacle, Indeed, If man
; could have seen it, must have been the
soarings of these monsters. But many
thousands of years had still to pass before
even the hairy ; ancestors of man could
evolve.
Of course, the Stegosaurus could not fly
like the birds, f Even if the reptile had
flapped its plates ever so swiftly it could
not have risen above the ground by their
means alone. It had; nevertheless, partial
command ot the air and so Is entitled to '
toe considered the father of all "heavier
than-air machines. ' - .
Its Movement.. A ' f 1 .
I 1 " Jf .
. t? 4. r f i
' 1... "4. '
' And, in some ways even more astonish-
ingt4t would seem to be the father of the
birds. He was the factory in which the
first bird was built Science is asking the
question if these plates were not the first
- step' toward. the feathered wings of the air
dwellers. , 1 f '
The only actual -wings existing "when
Stegosaurus lived were those of the primi
tive dragon fly who was about three feet
long and-Whose scientific name j-Paleodic-tyopteron
is thus' justified by tts size. It
took this i dragon fly, science believes,
about nine, million years to get out of the
water and convert Its legs Into wings. If,
the birds evolved from Stegosaurus they
beat the record of the dragon fly consider
ably. The Stegosaurus started in early in J
- the Jurassic era and spread from the far
Wyoming and Colorado, where their herds
were tbe most numerous, to the Gulf of
Mexico. Out of this period certainly came
the birds. After the reptile bird the fossil
scaled and feathered Archaeopterix fol-
. lowed the first mammal filer, the bat. The
Jurassic might well be termed the wing
evolving era of the geological ages.
Of Stegosaurus's relationship to s tbd
birds Professor Osborn, of the American
Museum -of Natural History, has written
and this before the recent discoveries have
confirmed and gone so much further than
his own -. conclusions that the partly
"armored dinosaurs, "known as Stegosaurs,
are related -to the Iguanodonts and belong
to the bird-pelvis group, Ornithischia. The
small .Trlassic ancestors of this ; great
- group 'h were herbivorous, brnlthischlan
, dinos aurs."i - ? -y-f 'v ?
' So not only the Stegosaurs, but also
their ancestors, were evolving, flight func
tions. We know with fair certainty that
: out 'of this group finally arose the living
v fossil, the ostrich part reptile, part mam
mal and part bird which, although it has
-wings, cannot fly, but uses its wings as an
aid to swift walking and running. ' Also
out of . this group arose the living! fossil
diving birds,-such as the penguin; which,
although it cannot fly in air, can fly under
water by aid of its wingsTand swiftly, too.
Th
'Stegosaurus was th waird and titanic living aaroplan of its age. It could mors tbjft
Jbugtr plates to form surfaeos that buoyed it ia swift coasts from Uvattoa to
, vation or aiido hundreds of feet through air under tbo impetus of his saw
mow hind legs. What a weird, spectacle, indeed 4 f man could hava 1
been there to witness it would bar been the flights . at tnesa ;
'it.
remote 1 common
ancestors of
birds, dinosaurs,
flying reptiles and
other reptilian
groups were very
primitive : lizard
like reptiles with
extremely l small
brains, compara
tively ; sluggish
habits and a high
ly variable" body
temperature."
Stegosaurus,
then, retained the
: sluggishness,
slow movement
and i infinitely
small brains, but
got as far as flap,
pers on his back
and a beak. If
; be could ' come ;
! back - to-day !- the
e Little Flying- Squirrel of To-day, Which Coasts Through, the Air aviators could rig
by Means of the WitSe Surface of Skin Beneath Its Les;s. bun up In a; few
minutes. - i -
Further evolu
toward life in the
air was made I by Stegosaurus in hollow
bones and hollow air chambers in some' of
. 1 ' Jk
v : .e w t si . . .
Precisely as the Gliding Dinosaur Was Enabled to
uo by Means of Its Movable Planes.
!
Note, by the way, in tbe illustration of
Stegosaurus, the crouching attitude of the
bird just before It leaps into the air.
And with-all of its handicaps to flight,
it ,went on specializing j In. functions of
flight for the benefit of tits' descendants,
carrying on wim a considerably lareer
its larger bones, making fir skeletonle
lightness, and also showing that his weight,
estimated by bis f bulk, has been largely
overestimated. Dr. Barnum Brown; re
duces to several tons, hollow-boned dinos-
i scale, the evolutionary processes of its an-j aurs accredited by their discoverers with
vesture. Ui tuese ... iTOressor liraemrr tTrentv ttr mnra trm Tn fha iillr nt an
states:
: Eacb year we hold a eemin
.subject, in which the rival claims of the'
dinosaurs and other reptilian groups to :
close kinship with birds! are considered. ?
Far back, in the carboniferous ages tha
, (C) 1920. International Feature Service. lae.
; animal the chief weight lies in its bones
rather than its flesh and cavernous abdo
men. Dr. GUmore has presented the inter
esting features of this : great reptile as
shown by reconstructing its entire skele
ton, - listing' its associate - creatures and
Great Britain BirhU Reserved. '
monsters I"
working out Its peculiar environment, as
follows:
"The extensive collections of Stegosapr
ian remains n the National Museum have,
with few exceptions, been obtained from
,two Important, though widely separated
' fossil deposits. These are the quarry in
Albany County, Wyoming, and the. one In
Fremont County, . Colorado. The former
was the -source of the greatest accumula-.
tion of fossil remains of this reptile known
and from whicb the wonderfully complete
skeleton of the species Stenops, herein fig
ured, was obtained. There were obtained
"in this quarry the fossil remains ot eleven -other,
species of dinosaurs, some turtles,
fish and one small mammal. The Stenops
skull was the most perfect yejt found.
"The skull shows that the drawings
which have appeared In numerous world's
periodicals are wrong, incorrect in their
details and wrong in their interpretations.
The cranium was long and slender,' wedge
shaped, the apex directed weir forward;
the nasal openings were long and Well for
ward, and the eye-sockets were large, cov
ering one-fifth of the length of the skuIL
. While the horned dinosaurs, with skulls
from seven to nine feet long, were the
largestlheaded vertebrates ever known,
the Stegosaurs are the smallest-headed,
.when the great bulk of their bodies are
considered. . The eye "cavities are larger
than the brain case. An alligator has a
train ten times larger. The elephant has
a brain of eight pounds, or twenty times
larger than that of Stegosaurus.
"The jaws have 18 functional teeth, so
small and weak as to be a source of won.
der and conjecture, as to the real feeding
habits. (This was a step forward to get
rid ot teeth and substitute' the sheath bill
of birds.) They would at least indicate
that their food consisted of the most suc
culent plants." ' c
The neutral, or spinal canal; was excep
tionally large, to make way for nervo
jraln matter, for which tberevwas little
1om in the skuIL At the lower end was
sacrum brain, twenty times larger than
he skull brain, for the control of limbs
nd tail of the reptile, f j
Dr. GUmore V description of how was
found the perfect specimen, from which
(he conclusions under discussion were
rade, Is most interesting: j
"Stegosaurus died either in water or
along the banks of one of the large streams
of Colorado. If he died on! the banks, be
fore decomposition set in, a freshet bore
the 'carcass down stream, and when the
water subsided the body stranded on an
Old river bar. Before reaching the bar
tbe softer tissues relaxed and allowed the
projecting plates along the back to droop,
and upon coming Into shallow water their
points were caught In the sand. The cur
rent acting against tbe carcass forced It
over on the plates, folding them back un
derneath tbe ribs on the lower side. The
larger plates above the hips and base of
tail, which were doubtless strongly at
tached, retained their natural positions.
As decomposition proceeded the lower left
side bones settled . in the ' sand, spaced
much as in life, while the! bones of the
right side were piled above the back-bone,
above the upstanding hip bones. The
action of the current laid out all of the
bones in the same direction. Sand speed
ily covered tbe settled skeleton, making
conditions right for fossijization.'
j "During the oncoming ages the sand
accumulated-to & depth of thousands of
feet, the great pressure finally consolidat
ing the skeleton into hard I sandstone, In
which our perfect fossil was found im
bedded." - !
i Crude aeroplane or glider as the Stego
saur was, the principle of all flight was
there in the parallel rows of flaps upon
bis back. Certainly he was the factory la
whicb tbe first bird was built, -