Suborder _Ceratopsia_ Marsh.
Fam. Ceratopsidae Cretacic.
* Regarded by Dr. von Huene as ancestral respectively to the
Theropoda and Sauropoda.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: If some vast catastrophe should today blot out all the
mammalian races including man, and the birds, but leave the lizards
and other reptiles still surviving, with the lower animals and plants,
we might well expect the lizards in the course of geologic periods to
evolve into a great and varied land fauna like the Dinosaurs of the
Mesozoic Era.]
[Footnote 3: The ancestral types have four complete toes, but in the
true Theropoda the inner digit is reduced to a small incomplete
remnant, its claw reversed and projecting at the back of the foot, as
in birds.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE CARNIVOROUS DINOSAURS, ALLOSAURUS, TYRANNOSAURUS,
ORNITHOLESTES, ETC.
SUB-ORDER THEROPODA.
The sharp teeth, compressed and serrated like a palaeolithic spear
point, and the powerful sharp-pointed curved claws on the feet, prove
the carnivorous habits of these dinosaurs. The well-finished joints,
dense texture of the hollow bones and strongly marked muscle-scars
indicate that they were active and powerful beasts of prey. They range
from small slender animals up to the gigantic _Tyrannosaurus_
equalling the modern elephant in bulk. They were half lizard, half
bird in proportions, combining the head, the short neck and small fore
limbs and long snaky tail of the lizard with the short, compact body,
long powerful hind limbs and three-toed feet of the bird.
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