THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Agents
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO
KARL W. HIERSEMANN
LEIPZIG
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
WATER REPTILES OF THE
PAST AND PRESENT
BY
Samuel Wendell Williston
Professor of Paleontology in the
University of Chicago
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Copyright 1914 by
The University of Chicago
All Rights Reserved
Published October 1914
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
[Pg v]
PREFACE
It was just forty years ago that the writer of these lines, then anassistant of his beloved teacher, the late Professor B. F. Mudge,dug from the chalk rocks of the Great Plains his first specimens ofwater reptiles, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. To the youthful collector,whose first glimpse of ancient vertebrate life had been the result ofaccident, these specimens opened up a new world and diverted the courseof his life. They were rudely collected, after the way of those times,for modern methods were impracticable with the rifle in one hand andthe pick in the other. Nor was much known in those days of these orother ancient creatures, for the science of vertebrate paleontology wasyet very young. There were few students of fossil vertebrates—Leidy,Cope, and Marsh were the only ones in the United States—and but fewcollectors, of whom the writer alone survives.
Those broken and incomplete specimens, now preserved in the museum ofYale University, will best explain why this little book was written.The author offers it, so far as lies within him, as an authoritativeand accurate account of some of the creatures of earlier ages whichsought new opportunities by going down from the land into the water.So far as possible he has endeavored to make the text understandable,and, he hopes, of interest also, to the non-scientific reader. He willnot apologize for such scientific terms as remain, since only by theiruse can precision be attained: there are no common English equivalentsfor them. The reader will find their explanations in the chapter on theskeleton of reptiles, and especially in the illustrations.
The author has had the opportunity during recent years of criticallystudying nearly all the reptiles described in the following pages,but, if that were the only source of his information, the accounts ofmany would have been meager. He has endeavored, briefly at least, tomention the names of all those to whom we are chiefly indebted for ourknowledge, but in such a work as this it is manifestly impracticable togive due credit to every one.[Pg vi]
To the friends who have been of assistance in various ways he tendershis sincere thanks: to Professor E. Fraas for photographs and the kindpermission to reproduce some of his excellent illustrations; to Dr.Dreverman, of the Senckenberg Museum, for several excellent photographsfor reproduction or restoration;