Identifier: waterreptilesofp1914will Title: Water reptiles of the past and present Year: 1914 (1910s) Authors: Williston, Samuel Wendell, 1851-1918 Subjects: Aquatic reptiles Publisher: Chicago, Ill., The University of Chicago Press Contributing Library: Boston Public Library Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book

Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image: , to which he gave the name Plesiosaurus,meaning like a lizard. He distinguished the plesiosaurs from ichthyosaurs, with which it is possible that they had previously been confounded, and gave a good description of considerable material. Cuvier, a little later, gave a more complete description of the same remains which had served Conybeare and De la Beche for their original description, and for the first time made it evident that fossil plesiosaurs were widely and abundantly distributed over the earth. The closing sentence of Cuviers chapter devoted to the discussion of these creatures in his Ossemens Fossiles was really prophetic, not only of the many discoveries of the plesiosaurs yet to be made, but of all other extinct animals as well: I doubt not that, in a few years it may be, I shall be compelled to say that the work which I have today finished, and to which I have given so much labor is but the first glimspe of the immense creations of ancient times. 73 WATER REPTILES OF THE PAST AND PRESEN

Text Appearing After Image: (1) o & fa H <T) i* n 3 kJ Uh m SAUROPTERYGIA 75 In quick succession there followed many other discoveries of plesiosaurs, not only in England but elsewhere in Europe. The famous English anatomist and paleontologist, Sir Richard Owen,to whom we owe, perhaps, more than to anyone else our present knowledge of these animals, the eccentric Hawkins of England, the learned von Meyer of Germany, and, in later times, more especially Seeley and Andrews of England, Fraas of Germany, Bogalobou and Riabanin of Russia, as well as many others, have brought to light during the past century many and varied forms of these sea-reptiles. Blaineville in 1835 gave to the plesiosaurs an ordinal rank under the class Ichthyosauria, and even the astute Owen in 1839 united them with the ichthyosaurs as a suborder of his Enaliosauria, or sea-saurians. He called them Sauropterygia, or reptile-finned, and these terms, Enaliosauria, Ichthyopterygia,and Sauropterygia, have long persisted in works on natural history be

Note About Images