PREHISTORIC MONSTERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19472, 6 May 1925, Page 11

PREHISTORIC MONSTERS.

In the early ’eighties of last century the crew of a sealing schooner reported having seen on the side of an. inlet on the coast of . Alaska a huge and extraordinary animal disappearing up into a steep ravine—tho crashing of its progress among the boulders and bushes reaching their ears. Now comes reports from Alaska and Kamchatka which deal with the same monster and its land—the keratosaurns of far-off ages—ages when the mammoth existed in north-eastern Siberia (says a writer in the Boys’ Own Paper). Fossils unearthed by a Smithsonian expedition, working in northern Mongolia, prove that a land connection once existed between Asia and North America. For parts of these remains have been identified as of the titanothere and also of the blauchiterium —two huge animals, the bones of which have been found in Utah and Montana. It lias to be kept in mind, too, that in a winter of excessive frost, when the sea between the Diomede Islands freezes hard, which it has dome in recent years, animals find their way across Behring Straits into Alaska, ’and again from Alaska into Kamchatka. According to accounts, there appears to he not one but several of this great rhinoceros-like monster, the kcraoosauros, roaming on the vast wilds of toe subArctic. For, while the comparatively fresh remains of a young keratosauros was found last year in Kamchatka, tho Catholic missionary at Armstrong Greek, in the far Yukon, Pore Lavagncanx, when travelling in the wilds there, actually rested his eyes on a full-grown monster. Two trappers accompanying him also saw this survivor from prehistoric ages. According to the padre, who is distinguished for his good work and influence among Yukon Indians, the creature appeared to be, from nose to tail—the latter being long—between 60ft and 70ft in length, and covered with prey-black bristles. It lurched down the ravine ahead of them, “ sweeping rocks aside like pebbles.” It or another of the same species, was also witnessed crossinig a river, carrying between its jaws the body of a deer or caribou. “ The stench of it coming down w ; nd was overpowering.’’