Читать книгу All About Dinosaurs - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 3

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Dinosaurs were the strangest animals that ever existed on this earth. They were the sort of creatures you might think of as inhabiting another planet or the kind you dream of in a bad nightmare. The word dinosaur (die´-no-sawr) means "terrible lizard." It is a good description. Dinosaurs were reptiles, cold-blooded animals related to crocodiles, snakes and lizards. At one time they ruled the entire world.

Some were of gigantic size, heavier than a dozen elephants. Those had long snake-like necks, small heads, and twenty-foot tails. They waded along the margins of lakes and rivers, half sunk in mud and water, feeding on soft plants.

Others walked on powerful hind legs, and stood as tall as a palm tree. Their small arms ended in clutching hands and curved claws longer than those of the biggest bear. Their mouths were more than a yard deep, bristling with great dagger-like teeth. They killed other dinosaurs and tore the flesh off their bodies, gulping it in hundred-pound chunks.

Some were huge, pot-bellied reptiles thirty feet long. They walked erect, balanced by heavy tails. Their faces were drawn out and flattened into wide, horny beaks like a duck's bill. Two thousand small teeth filled their mouths. They loved to wallow in lake-shore mud, chewing plants and herbs. But they were good swimmers, too. When a hungry flesh-eater leaped out of the forest, they dashed for deep water where he couldn't follow.

Other dinosaurs were short-legged and square-bodied, as big as an army tank. Long horns projected forward like two machine guns from a bony shield over an ugly hooked beak. They lumbered through the jungle, and all other animals fled in terror.

Another fantastic reptile carried a line of triangular plates down the middle of its back. On the tip of the ten-foot tail were four huge spikes, three feet long. At the same time there lived a dinosaur completely armored by a heavy shell. Its thick tail ended in a huge mass of bone. He could swing it like a war club and give a crushing blow.

Some dinosaurs were slender and swift, skipping over the plains faster than a race horse. And some were very small, no larger than rabbits. They hid among the rocks or in the thickest forest for protection.

What I tell you about these unbelievable creatures is true. They really did live. We know they did because we find their bones buried in the earth. These bones have been fossilized or turned to stone.

Also we find their footprints in stone. It is just as if you had stepped in soft mud, and the tracks your feet made had become solid rock. In the same way the impressions of plants and trees and insects have been preserved in stone. So we know what the country was like when the dinosaurs lived.

The time was the Age of Reptiles. That was a period in the earth's history which began 200 million years in the past and ended 60 million years ago. When we talk about millions of years, it is difficult to get a real mind-picture of that vast length of time. Ape-like human beings did not exist until one million years ago. Our recorded history is hardly 7,000 years old. The time back to the Age of Reptiles is like the distance in miles separating us from the moon.

People often ask if there are any dinosaurs living today. The answer is, no. They all died out at the end of the Age of Reptiles. Why they disappeared we don't know. We only know they did. When you see pictures in the "funnies" of dinosaurs with men, that is all imagination. No human being ever saw a dinosaur alive. They had become extinct 60 million years before man came upon the earth.

The Age of Reptiles lasted 140 million years. During that great length of time dinosaurs ruled the land. In the air weird goblin-like reptiles sailed through the gloomy skies. Some of them had long faces, peaked heads and twenty-foot wings. They make one think of fairy-tale witches flying on broomsticks.

The oceans swarmed with other reptiles. There were great sea serpents with wide flat bodies, long slender necks, and small heads filled with sharp teeth. There were also giant lizards, forty feet long, and others that looked like fish. Truly the land, the sea and the air were frightening in the Age of Reptiles.

But the earth back in that far dim past was not as it is today. The climate was different. In most places it was tropical or sub-tropical like southern California or southern Florida. The climate was the same almost everywhere. There were no cold winters. If there had been, the reptiles could not have flourished the way they did. They didn't like cold weather. In those days the weather was warm and humid the year round. Thick jungles, low lands and swamps stretched across most of the world.

In the Age of Reptiles the great mountain systems had not yet been born. The Himalayas, now the highest mountain range in the world, did not exist. There were no Rocky Mountains. Instead, the low lying country of western America and of central Europe held great inland seas. What is now the state of Kansas was covered with water. Also Wyoming and Montana. The land lifted at times and sank and rose again. One hundred and forty million years is a long time, and many changes took place.

Our geography books would not have been of much use then. The continents then were not as they are today. There were land connections which do not exist at the present time. North America and Asia doubtless had a wide land bridge across the Bering Straits. North and South America were more broadly united than today. Possibly North America and Europe were joined across Greenland and Iceland. Europe and Africa were connected where the Mediterranean Sea now separates them. Asia and Australia were joined by land in what is now the East Indies.

This is the way we think the world geography looked during much of the Age of Reptiles. You can see, therefore, that animals could have traveled from one continent to another. They were not cut off by the climate, mountains and oceans that exist today.

That is the reason why dinosaur bones are found over much of the world. They have been discovered in North and South America from Canada to Patagonia, in various parts of Europe, in Africa and Asia, and even in Australia.