lephant they have five short toes on each foot, probably
buried in life in a large soft pad, but the inner digits bear large
claws, blunt like those of turtles, one in the fore foot, three in the
hind foot.

To this group belong the Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, the
Camarasaurus, Morosaurus and other less known kinds. All of them lived
during the late Jurassic and Comanchic ("Lower Cretaceous") and belong
to the older of the two principal Dinosaur faunas. They were
contemporaries of the Allosaurus and Megalosaurus, the Stegosaurus and
Iguanodon, but unlike the Carnivorous and Beaked Dinosaurs they
became wholly extinct before the Upper or true Cretacic, and left no
relatives to take part in the final epoch of expansion and prosperity
of the dinosaurian race at the close of the Reptilian era.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Skeletons of _Brontosaurus_ (above) and
_Diplodocus_ (below) in the American Museum. The parts preserved
in these specimens are shaded. Scale, 10 feet=1 inch.]

BRONTOSAURUS.

The following description of the Brontosaurus skeleton in the American
Museum was first published in the American Museum Journal of April,
1905:[11]

"The Brontosaurus skeleton, the principal feature of the hall, is
sixty-six feet eight inches long. (The weight of the animal when alive
is estimated by W.K. Gregory at 38 tons). About one-third of the
skeleton including the skull is restored in plaster modelled or cast
from other incomplete skeletons. The remaining two-thirds belong to
one individual, except for a part of the tail, one shoulder-blade and
one hind limb, supplied from another skeleton of the same species.

"The skeleton was discovered by Mr. Walter Granger of the Museum
expedition of 1898, about nine miles north of Medicine Bow, Wyoming.
It took the whole of the succeeding summer to extract it from the
rock, pack it, and ship it to the Museum. Nearly two years were
consumed in removing the matrix, piecing together and cementing the
brittle and shattered petrified bone, strengthening it so that it
would bear handling, and restoring the missing parts of the bones in
tinted plaster. The articulation and mounting of the skeleton and
modelling of the missing bones took an even longer time, so that it
was not until February, 1905, that the Brontosaurus was at last ready
for exhibition.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Excavating the _Brontosaurus_ skeleton.
The upper photograph shows the anterior ribs of one side s