Читать книгу All About Strange Beasts of the Past - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 3

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Imagine time turned back almost a million years. That was the beginning of the Ice Age in America. Great fields of ice covered much of the northern part of the continent.

The country near what is now the city of Los Angeles, California, looked much as it does today. In the wide valley at Rancho La Brea, clumps of trees and bushes were scattered through tall grass.

To the east, the silver thread of a river could just be seen. In the foreground lay several strange looking pools. Each was surrounded by a bare black patch of ground on which nothing could grow. The pools were half-liquid asphalt, or tar. Through them at intervals broke bubbles of oil and evil-smelling gas. After a rain the surface was probably covered with a few inches of water. It was not good water, but it was drinkable. During dry weather a film of wind-blown dust made the tar look like solid ground. The pools, the valley and distant mountains, now called the Coast Range, shimmered in the hot sun of a summer’s day.

A saber-toothed “tiger” which had just aroused from sleep looked over the valley from the summit of a shaded hill. He was a powerful beast, the most dreaded killer of the country. He had a short tail and massive front limbs. From either side of his upper jaw, nine-inch canine teeth projected downward. They were curved like sabers, sharp and pointed. No animal could stand against him. He wasn’t really a tiger but he looked so much like one that tiger is what he is usually called.

The saber-toothed tiger was king of the country. All of it belonged to him by right of strength, ferocity and his terrible teeth. He stretched like a giant house cat and yawned. The lower jaw dropped, lying almost flat against his neck. Thus, his mouth could be opened widely. It gave him free use of his teeth as slashing knives or plunging daggers. Those teeth could cut through skin, flesh, and even bone.

Illustration Caption: The skull of the saber-tooth shows how the jaw dropped to open the mouth widely.

The saber-tooth was a little hungry, but the sun beat down with blazing heat. Food in plenty roamed in front of him. He had only to select. But the day was hot, and he didn’t want to exert himself. A herd of magnificent imperial mammoths lumbered along the skyline. They were forerunners of our living elephants, but larger. Their great ivory tusks, curving inward, turned back the sun’s rays like bars of polished steel.

But mammoths were not favorites of the saber-toothed tiger. They were too big, their skins too thick, their strength too great. At any time they would give a tough fight. Only when the great tiger could find a baby mammoth was it worth the trouble.

Illustration Caption: The early camel had no hump and was larger than today.

At one side, a group of camels browsed through the bushes and small trees. They were big animals, larger than camels of today. Their hair was thick, and they had no humps of tissue and fat on their backs.

The saber-tooth looked at them with distaste. It would require effort to do a proper stalk and more effort to make the kill. He wasn’t hungry enough. It was a lazy day. A little more sleep would be very good. He stretched luxuriously on the rock. His eyes closed, and his chin rested on his forepaws.

Half an hour later he waked suddenly. Some strange instinct brought him to his feet. In the valley below, his eye caught movement. Two huge, shaggy, golden-brown animals were pushing through the brush near a dry creek bed.

Instantly the tiger’s body stiffened. His yellow eyes blazed. This was his favorite prey—the big, clumsy, slow-moving ground sloths. They were distant cousins of the small sloths, living today in South America, that hang on the underside of tree branches with hooked claws.

These ground sloths were larger than a grizzly bear. All through their skins were little pieces of bone. It gave them a kind of armor. Also, the hair was very thick and long. And they had great curved claws.

The sloths waddled about, sure that they were safe. They were safe enough from wolves and even lions, but not from the saber-tooth. He could cut through that tough skin with blows of his dagger teeth and rip open the jugular vein. He must be careful to avoid their claws, but that wasn’t difficult. The ground sloths were too slow and stupid to worry him, and their flesh was very good.

The beasts were working their way toward the black pools. They were thirsty, and water from the previous night’s rain glistened in the sun. They crossed the bare, black margin around the largest pool and splashed in to drink. For a few moments nothing happened. Then slowly the bottom began to yield. Their feet sank into gummy tar. Struggling in fright, they tried desperately to pull themselves out. But their hind legs only went deeper and deeper into the black ooze. Escape was impossible.

Illustration Caption: A great imperial mammoth was trapped in the tar pits of La Brea.

The saber-toothed tiger had left his hillock and crept silently through the brush. Belly down, chin almost touching the grass, his body seemed to flow across the ground. It was like the smooth movement of a snake. With eyes blazing, he watched the great beasts struggling in the pool. The time had come. In one bound, he flashed across the bare margin and leaped on the back of the nearest sloth. With a desperate wrench the animal threw him off. He rolled over in the asphalt. Snarling, the saber-tooth turned to strike at the golden-brown neck beside him. But he couldn’t raise his feet. The sticky tar held them in a clutch of death. For the first time in his life, terror gripped his heart. Forgetting the sloths, he tried to drag himself out. But it was too late. He was sucked down slowly into the black depths of the asphalt pool.

From the bare branches of a tree, half a dozen great black vultures watched the tragedy being enacted below them. Huge birds they were, with naked red heads, enormous beaks, and ten-foot wings. These vultures were close relatives of the California condor that lives today. Like all vultures, they fed on dead flesh or helpless animals. They didn’t kill for themselves as eagles and hawks do but waited until an animal died or had been caught.

While the sloths were still struggling in the clinging asphalt, the vultures circled over the trapped animals. One plopped down upon the surface of the pool. Then another and another. With hoarse croaks they surrounded the exhausted beasts. In a moment their great beaks would tear out chunks of living flesh. But as each bird tried to move, the sticky tar gripped its feet. Like insects on a sheet of flypaper, their wings and feathers were caught and held. Soon the scavengers of the plains were only black balls of tar. Long before the sun dropped behind the mountains, all trace of birds and beasts had disappeared. The pools glistened like silver. The traps were baited for new victims.

The story you have just read is true. It is imaginative only in details. We know it is true because of the fossil bones buried in the asphalt. Also because we can see the same tar traps operating today. The pits are not so large as they were a million years ago.

One morning I stood on the edge of one of the La Brea pools. A rabbit and a heron were struggling in the black ooze. A hawk circled overhead, coming lower and lower. I watched it dive for the rabbit. It sank its claws in the animal’s body and tried to lift it out. In two minutes the bird itself was caught. Such has been the fate of many animals and birds through the years. Often cattle, horses and dogs have been caught in the asphalt. Some were dragged out with ropes. Others, not seen in time, died miserably. By this time the pits have been shut off so that wandering animals cannot be trapped by the deadly tar.

Originally the pools were formed by oil that oozed up from the earth in springs. Around the springs the tar remains soft. Elsewhere it hardens into a solid mass mixed with earth and wind-blown dust. In the Ice Age, the oil springs were more active than now.

When men began to take asphalt out of the La Brea pits to make roads, they discovered thousands of bones buried in the tar. For a time, little was done about it. Then scientists at the University of California began to study the strange bones. Thousands of skulls and tens of thousands of other bones have been dug out. The bones are filled with asphalt, but they have changed very little. Of course, nothing remains of the flesh, skin, horns and hoofs. The bones are jumbled up in a crowded mass so that the skeletons are never together.

The La Brea tar pits are famous as the richest fossil deposit ever discovered anywhere in the world. Nowhere else are the remains of so many different kinds of extinct animals found in one place. Nowhere else are the bones so well preserved. Nowhere else are they so easy to dig out and study.

Illustration Caption: The bison and grim wolf were beasts of the Ice Age.

As scientists have examined the La Brea fossils, they have identified more than fifty different kinds of birds. They have found at least that many kinds of mammals, too. There are remains of elephants, camels and sloths; of deer, bison, horses and wild pigs. Three thousand skulls of the “grim wolf” and two thousand skulls of the saber-toothed tigers have been recovered. Also there are fossil bones of bears and lions and dozens of other beasts. Most of these creatures have been extinct for thousands and thousands of years.

Most of the bones are those of flesh-eating mammals, birds of prey and wading birds. The story of the saber-toothed tiger and the sloths and vultures gives the reason. The larger animals, caught in the asphalt, were bait for the trap. They lured flesh-eaters into the treacherous tar. Day after day this has gone on for a million years.

The remains of ducks, geese and herons are numerous. Perhaps they were attracted by the sheets of shimmering water on the tar and thought these were pleasant pools in which to swim.

The La Brea tar pits give a wonderful representation of the mammals that lived in southern California during the Ice Age. It is a whole chapter in the past life on this earth, written in black asphalt tar.