A REPTILE WHICH LIVED TWELVE MILLION YEARS AGO.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 146, 17 May 1879, Page 3

A REPTILE WHICH LIVED TWELVE MILLION YEARS AGO.

The American Museum of Natural History, New York, has just been enriched by a contribution of three slabs of sandstone taken from the Connecticut Valley. The donor of the slabs desires that his name shall not be mentioned in print, but the,specimens are said to have come from Falls, Mass. On two of the slabs are impressed large foot prints of some amphibious animal. Professor Hitchcock names the animal the Brontozoum giganUum. The beast is, or was in ancient times, a reptile of enormous size, as the prints of his feet on the slabs presented to the museum show. The theory of the geologists is that this monster was formed something like a frog ; that he walked mostly on his hind legs, only using his fore legs when it was necesrary for him to drop down to rest. It is estimated that he lived about 12,000,000 years before the appearance of man on this earth. The third slab is covered with the mark.-; of the feet of some insect which is unknown to the present generation. From the foot prints the geologists have determined that the insect was of the ephemana genus. Insects of this class can live in the water several days, but on the land they survive for but from one to twenty-four hours. The theory regarding these foot prints is that the insect found himself on dry land, with the tide receding, and in attempting to gain the water he left these marks upon the sand, which are presumed to teach the nineteenth century something of the history of the past.