File:Cold-blooded vertebrates- part I. Fishes (1930) (20662643575).jpg

Title: Cold-blooded vertebrates: part I. Fishes
Identifier: coldbloodedverte08hild (find matches)
Year: 1930 (1930s)
Authors: Hildebrand, Samuel F. (Samuel Frederick), 1883-1949; Gilmore, Charles Whitney, 1874-; Cochran, Doris M. (Doris Mable), 1898-1968
Subjects: Fishes; Amphibians; Reptiles
Publisher: (New York, Smithsonian institution series, inc. )
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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FOSSIL TRACKS AND TRAILS like the Gorgons and Chimeras of the ancient poets. But now that hun- dreds of their footprints, as fresh and distinct as if yesterday impressed upon the mud, arrest the attention of the skeptic on the ample slabs of our cabinets, he might as reasonably doubt his own corporeal ex- istence as that of these enormous and peculiar races. A study of the region where the tracks are best pre- served and most abundant has led geologists to suppose that the Connecticut Valley in Triassic times was a tidal
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 75. Slab of Connecticut Valley footprints. After Hitchcock estuary extending southward from Northfield, Mass., to New Haven, Conn., a distance of no miles. Here and there in this estuary were mud flats, left bare by the re- ceding tide, and on these flats and along the shores animals now extinct congregated. Possibly some came tor food, others to bask in the sun. The footprints made during their perambulations, slightly hardened by the heat from a tropical sun, endured in spite of the incoming tide, whose burden of sediment gently buried them without injury. Over and over again the waters deposited layer upon layer of sand and mud, which, in the ages that followed, solidi- fied into stone, thus preserving the imprints for future generations to marvel at. Judging by the abundance of three-toed tracks (Fig. 75), it would seem that those dinosaurs predominated that walked upon the hind legs only. The impressions, while (271 )

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