Diplodocus, of which several incomplete specimens have been discovered, was intermediate in size between Atlantosaurus and Morosaurus, and may have reached when living, a length of forty or fifty feet. Its skull was of moderate size, with slender jaws. The teeth were weaker than those of any other known Dinosaur, and entirely confined to the front of the jaws. Professor Marsh concludes from the teeth that Diplodocus was herbivorous, feeding on succulent vegetation, and that it probably led an aquatic life. Fig. 11 shows its skull.
The remains of this interesting Dinosaur (Brontosaurus), which in several ways differs from other members of the "lizard-footed" group, were found in Upper Jurassic beds, near Cañon City, Colorado. A second smaller species was also discovered near Morrison, Colorado. All the remains lay in the Atlantosaurus beds. These strata--the tomb in which Nature has buried up so many of her dragons of old time--can be traced for several hundred miles on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains, and are always to be known by the bones they contain. They lie above the Triassic strata and just below the Sandstone of the Dakota group. Some have regarded them as of Cretaceous age; but, judging from their fossils, there can be but little doubt that they were deposited during the Jurassic period--probably in an old estuary. They consist of shale and sandstone.
Besides the numerous Dinosaurs, Professor Marsh's colleagues have found abundant remains of crocodiles, tortoises, and fishes, with one Pterodactyl, a flying reptile (see chap. viii.), and several small marsupials. The wonderful collection of American Jurassic Dinosaurs in the Museum of Yale College includes the remains of several hundred individuals, many of them in excellent preservation, and has afforded to Professor Marsh the material for his classification already alluded to.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Head of _Diplodocus_.
English Dinosaurs of the Lizard-footed Group.
Unfortunately, there are at present no complete skeletons known of English Dinosaurs related to the American forms above described. But, since the English fossils were first in evidence by many years, and Marsh's discoveries have confirmed in a remarkable way conclusions drawn by Owen, Huxley, Hulke, and Seeley, and others from materials that were rather fragmentary, it may be worth while to give some account of these remains and the interpretations they have received.