File:Image from page 189 of "Water reptiles of the past and present" (1914) (14750051926).jpg

Identifier: waterreptilesofp1914will Title: Water reptiles of the past and present Year: 1914 (1910s) Authors: Williston, Samuel Wendell, 1851-1918 Subjects: Aquatic reptiles Publisher: Chicago, Ill., The University of Chicago Press Contributing Library: Boston Public Library Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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Text Appearing Before Image: ny reptiles of thepast which have sought a more con-genial or a safer home in the waterfew have had a more interesting his-tory, or a briefer one, than those towhich the late Professor Cope gavethe name Choristodera in 1876.Many students of repute consider thegroup an order, others a suborderof the Rhynchocephalia. The group,whether order or suborder, are inter-esting because of their long anddevious migrations from westernNorth America to Europe, or viceversa, through rivers and ponds;interesting also because of the per-sistence of certain old-fashioned traitsthat clung to them long after theirdisappearance in other animals.Perhaps these traits were among thecauses of their merely moderate success as animals of the water,traits that led to their early dissolution. Like the proganosaurs,which they must have resembled in external appearance nota little, they wandered from their birthplace in the westerncontinent, to perish in the eastern; and like them their span ofexistence was short.

Text Appearing After Image: Fig. -Saipheosaurus, an Upper Jurassic rhynchocephalian(After Lortet.) RHYNCHOCEPHA LI A 179 Their history among man-kind, too, is brief. The firstknown specimens, from westernNorth America, were describedby Professor Cope in 1876,under the name Champsosaurus.In the following year ProfessorGervais of Paris made knownanother form from Rheims,which he called Simoedosaurus,so closely allied to the Americanthat even yet they have notbeen sharply distinguished.Some years later these Europeanspecimens were more fully de-scribed by the well-knownBelgian paleontologist, Dr.Dollo, but it has been onlywithin the past few years thatour knowledge of the animalshas been made at all completeby the discovery and descriptionof several excellent skeletons ofChampsosaurus by Mr. BarnumBrown of New York. These semiaquatic reptilesnever grew very large—not morethan four or five feet in length;nor did they ever succeed inbecoming fully at home in thewater, certainly no more so thanour modern alligators

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