"Looking at the mounted skeleton we may see that if a line be drawn
from the hip joint to the shoulder-blade, all the bones below this are
massive, all above (including neck and head) are lightly constructed.
This line may be taken to indicate the average water-line, so to
speak, of this Leviathan of the Shallows. The long neck would enable
the animal, however, to wade to a considerable depth, and it might
forage for food either in the branches or the tops of trees, or more
probably, among the soft succulent water-plants of the bottom. The row
of short spoon-shaped stubby teeth around the front of the mouth would
serve to bite or pull off soft leaves and water-plants, but the animal
evidently could not masticate its food, and must have swallowed it
without chewing as do modern reptiles and birds.
"The brain-case occupies only a small part of the back of the skull,
so that the brain must have been small even for a reptile, and its
organization (as inferred from the form of the brain-case) indicates a
very low grade of intelligence. Much larger than the brain proper was
the spinal cord, especially in the region of the sacrum, controlling
most of the reflex and involuntary actions of the huge organism. Hence
we can best regard the Brontosaurus as a great, slow-moving animal
automaton, a vast storehouse of organized matter directed chiefly or
solely by instinct, and to a very limited degree, if at all, by
conscious intelligence. Its huge size and its imperfect organization,
compared with the great quadrupeds of today, rendered its movements
slow and clumsy; its small and low brain shows that it must have been
automatic, instinctive and unintelligent.
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